Facebook Says It Found More Miscalculated Metrics - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-says-it-found-more-miscalculated-metrics-1479303984 <comment><USER2> I see a lot of commentary about conversion metrics and how does reach matter etc. So let me share some perspective from point of view of mainstream consumer products advertisers whose individual FB budgets easily push into hundred million dollars plus zone.

The primary business objective of advertising for companies such as mine is to build brand awareness, product benefit awareness and brand identity (eg. are you partial to Coke or Pepsi? Nike or Addidas? etc). Doing this will influence your purchase when you next shop for our categories (eg. your next shopping trip to Walmart or Amazon). Note that we are looking to influence a future shopping trip, any "digital conversion" we may get (eg. click thorough to our product page or an online retailer) really is pure gravy from our point of view.

The primary metrics of interest to us therefore are how many people did our impressions reach (people - not cookies or devices), of the ones we did, how many were in our desired target audience and what was our impression frequency to them (at some point, high frequency becomes excessive). We don't even really look at clicks or conversions unless there is a specific interaction based marketing program.

Hope this helps explain how big advertisers look at media.

<comment><USER3> You are using Facebook ads for exposure, the same way consumer companies have been treating TV. You are looking for mindshare. How is that working out so far? Are you able to measure exposure to impact on future purchases?

<comment><USER4> Actually for digital ads, there is a way to measure offline sales lift (albeit a few shortcomings). It requires a lot of money (i.e. ~50K for a study, and media spend 250K+). We are able to tie a digital impression to traceable tender (credit card, loyalty card, etc). There will be an exposed group and unexposed group who match each other audience-wise. Lift is then calculated and vetted for significance.

For more info, I recently did an interview on an ad-tech site about this: [http://www.thalamus.co/blog/lenny-chase- interview/](http://www.thalamus.co/blog/lenny-chase-interview/) Happy to talk more separately if interested.

<comment><USER5> Any insight into options for advertisers without that sort of budget to put towards just a single brand lift test?

<comment><USER4> Brand lift or Sales Lift? Brand lift is a bit different because there are a lot more companies offering this due to more simplicity. The shortcoming of Brand Lift is every vendor has their own methodology when it comes to deciding what exactly is a marginal lift in brand awareness. I think the easiest option for a lower budget is using a FB/IG brand awareness campaign and looking at ad recall numbers ([https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1029827880390718](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1029827880390718)). However, we don't really know how they calculate this number and it would only be useful to benchmark between campaigns (if you trust the number). The best option right now is to find a vendor that polls the user who saw the ad, like Vizu (Nielsen). Unfortunately, to get a stat. significant read, you probably need a lot of results, and thus would need higher media spends.

<comment><USER5> Both actually.

I don't trust the black box of the ad recall stats they provide, so that's not really an option. Is Nielsen's data any less of a black box for this sort of data? And is it actually a decent sample? The older way Nielsen did things was biased because people had to sign up to be a part of it.

And yes, the challenge is that to get a statistically significant read, we need to throw a lot into a specific test, and that is hard to justify without benchmarks. Kind of a chicken and egg problem if your brand is large enough where it takes considerable display dollars to make a blip against your other traffic.

I've been curious if things like Adobe's Attribution econometric modeling tools help much here, but guessing that lack of data will be an issue there as well.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you 100%. No options are ideal and statistically correct which sucks... a lot. As you mentioned there will always be selection bias and a black box, just hopefully less, with Nielsen for example. Not many people in our space even understand these problems exist, so I think you already lead the pack in this regard. For the sales lift studies, the methodology seems less "iffy" since its one to one and measurable results. One can argue there's selection bias due to no cash data. I haven't seen any cheaper options to do this while minimizing error also.

My client is in the same chicken-egg problem and the way we approached it is: Going on blind is worse than the risk of a bad study. It's completely up to us to do due diligence and ask the right questions to find holes in the vendor's methodology and minimize the risk. We felt that the data gained will be accurate directionally, albeit skewed.

I've never had first hand experience with Adobe's attribution models but from what I gather, lack of data and similar to media mix modeling.

IMO, advancements in this space will be battling privacy concerns.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, privacy concerns are what will decide a lot of this. I'm very torn because as an end-user I definitely have gotten more nervous with the current state of tracking, but as an advertiser, these are arguably the toughest problems in the industry and what keep me up at night.

Have you found any good off-the-shelf tools to help with the incremental lift analysis that might be better suited for advertisers who are not as massive? Our current plan is to get DCM in place, pipe everything we can through there, and then let our Data Science team go nuts at trying to model it. Seems like that's our best bet since tools like Adometry or other dedicated attributions platforms don't make sense for us yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work in a mid-size company where "the computer guy" manages the Facebook page. One day my boss asked me _" WTH does reach mean, you mean with 50 bucks we reached 100 000 people ?"_ Before replying, I read fb docs, a lot of blogs and for me it was gobbledygook. I said it was marketing bullshit and that we should focus on conversion rates. I felt guilty. Impostor syndrome kind of guilty. Until now.

<comment><USER7> I'm part of a small grant writing consulting firm, and we tried advertising through Constant Contact's Ad Launcher program. We only want to reach nonprofit executive directors and some heads of public agencies (for example, housing authorities or cities managers). Facebook advertising was complete garbage for us, or, alternately, none of us could target the ads properly—including me. We got a fair number of "leads" but virtually none were qualified clients.

Adwords used to work really well, but its effectiveness has declined in recent years.

We've tried finding a LinkedIn consultant without any luck.

<comment><USER8> Have you considered highly targeted value based cold emailing?

The HN community may be weary of sending / receiving unsolicited email but if you provide massive value upfront and only contact prospects who would get 2x+ ROI from your product/services, you will not be seen as spam and will convert a good % of the prospects.

I've run a lot of these type of campaigns and the key is to:

A) Only target prospects who have a real need for your product/service and have the budget for it

In your case, I would go on different grant websites and add their grant recipients to your prospect list. This way, you only target organizations who actively use grants.

B) Do a bit of work for them to provide upfront value in your cold email

In your case, research a list of grants they're eligible for (you can share the same list to nonprofits in the same space) and provide unique insights about these grant givers are looking for based on your experience. Your value upfront + value ideas will open the conversation and naturally lead to prospects asking about about how you can help them.

You can get an idea of what the initial email could look like here: [http://www.artofemails.com/sales- freelancer#writer](http://www.artofemails.com/sales-freelancer#writer)

<comment><USER9> I'm an executive at a nonprofit and I delete all unsolicited email unopened. I just don't have time for it. I don't know how typical I am (small organization and it's part time for everyone involved)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > None of the metrics in question impact Facebook's billing, said Mark Rabkin, > vice president of Facebook's core ads team.

This is the point. Might not impact the billing, but might lead announcers to miscalculate which campaign to use, for how long, for which audience, in the ending resulting in bad contracts with Facebook. That will be billed _correctly_.

<comment><USER11> Kind of like how service providers constantly have issues with their infrastructure and support, but the billing website and auto-billing system? That's always working.

Shows you where their priorities are.

<comment><USER12> To be fair, those systems have drastically fewer users connected and it's comparatively easy to scope usage and subsequently resources for them.

Whereas with production systems usage and troubleshooting is far more unstable.

<comment><USER13> Eh, some how the "purchase service" page is far more reliable than the "downgrade or cancel my service" page.

<comment><USER9> If there even is a page for that. Often that takes a phone call, a fax (!) or even an appointment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That reminds me, did they ever address the Click Farm problem that was essentially rendering likes and views worthless for many advertisers? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

Or the rampant Freebooting? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q)

<comment><USER15> It's hard to imagine them doing so, because up until a certain point (advertisers leaving, which we ain't there yet) it's not in their interest.

It brings me back to something I complained about on these boards years ago. I was working with a fairly small social gaming company about 10 years ago, during which time Facebook was boasting about "300m, 400m, 500m users!". Meanwhile, we were learning that almost half the users in our game were "fake" accounts. It was a major issue, but wasn't in the interests of Facebook to disclose during their hyper-growth. In fact, they made a point to state that fake accounts was not an problem.

Clearly Facebook will use the metrics when they are convenient, despite their invalidity.

<comment><USER16> I had to learn the hard way that any number the development team gave the marketing group would be used in a way we would come to regret. It's a big part of my cynicism about the industry.

People remember numbers but lose the context. Especially people whose bonuses depend on misunderstanding them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So you're telling me that they don't have a test which provisions a Facebook with N users, calls the AJAX handlers for K clicks, from various users and then checks that the metrics show that K clicks were counted, from the correct users? That they don't do this for video watches, friend display-to-click conversions, and every other metric they use to make decisions about what happens on the site? Really?

<comment><USER18> I don't believe in a conscious conspiracy within Facebook to defraud advertisers. I absolutely believe in a pervasive, semi-conscious but unspoken feeling that asking deep questions about the effectiveness of Facebook advertising or the validity of ad metrics would raise conclusions that would be definitively bad for Facebook, so it doesn't happen.

<comment><USER19> I interned on Atlas (FB's enterprise advertising platform purchased from MS a while back) and this was the impression I got. _Everything_ has a dollop of feel-good verbiage piled on top. We're not selling ads, we're "building more meaningful connections between businesses and their customers."

The initial value proposition of online ads was click = confirmed intent. When not enough people click, they construct increasingly convoluted notions of purchasing seconds of mindshare at a time. Of course, at a certain point these purchases become as untestable as a billboard on a highway, a big difference being that highway billboards don't prop up industries, ecosystems, and even geographical regions like online advertising does.

If someone calls shenanigans on online ads, it will be far more catastrophic than if they did the same on billboards/radio/TV ads.

<comment><USER20> +1 "construct increasingly convoluted notions..." to rationalize or support anything is a huge red flag in this case and, imo, life in general. Understanding the tax system requires trudging through increasingly obscure rules? It's probably a broken, inefficient system. Health care billing system rules are convoluted, vague, and complex? Yeah, it's probably pretty broken. Need a convoluted, complex explanation to rationalize your support for Peter Thiel despite his endorsement of certain political figures? Again, a huge red flag.

<comment><USER21> Best analogized with computational astrology... Oh you used numbers? Then astrology must be great source of advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This isn't surprising if you've advertised on FB. I tried, and the results I got were dismal (to be fair, it was for B2B which I think generally does poor there).

<comment><USER23> I run B2B Facebook ads, and they work just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How much of the money they made from these bugs (the new ones and the older ones) will they be returning to their advertisers?

<comment><USER25> Do they have a contractual obligation to do so? Im curious.

<comment><USER26> Yes, if proven. If someone promises 1000 clicks for your dollar and delivers only 999, they are at fault, have not fulfilled the contract and either you should be reimbursed or they have to deliver the missing click.

That Facebook talk publicly about this issue (naming it a software bug) either means some lawyer business is already happening in the background, or the difference between what they promised and delivered is so obvious that it is just a question of time. This article is bad for Facebook's image as an advertisement platform and there is no reason to publish something like this, other than liability.

That said, Facebook has good lawyers and will obviously make it exceptionally hard for customers to prove Facebook is at fault. Additionally, their terms of service for the self-serve ads[1] is filled with blurry statements such as "we are not responsible for [...] technological issues [...] that may affect the cost of running ads", which will make legal battles lengthy and boring.

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/legal/self_service_ads_terms](https://www.facebook.com/legal/self_service_ads_terms)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I guess they moved fast and broke things.

</comment><comment><USER28>
      98% of all statistics are made up.

Its ok, Facebook.

\--

Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561302)

</comment><comment><USER29> I bet "miscalculated metrics" is a really good replacement word for "ad click fraud".

</comment><comment><USER30> Can I ask what has prompted this "investigation" of sorts by Facebook? Just the election? I wonder who is putting pressure on them to straighten this out.

<comment><USER4> As an anecdote, I know that the ad industry lately has been talking about transparency and I'd like to think we're getting more advanced in tech that people start asking the right questions. Or maybe I'm naive to believe that.

<comment><USER31> The ad industry will never be "transparent" (i.e. clear and colorless), because it has falsifiability issues. Transparency would mean that they admit that most of the industry is based on guessing, that there's no science behind huge commercial transactions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think Facebook has proven by now that even if they aren't doing this on purpose to trick advertisers into thinking their ads are much more effective than they really are, at least the product doesn't seem ready for primetime with so many "bugs" in measuring popping up.

If you're a small business, Facebook may screw you over big time, so it's not worth the risk. I assume big companies just don't care.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it weird or normal for a company like Facebook to share this kind of information with the public like this?

Feels oddly transparent. What is prompting this level of transparency?

</comment><comment><USER34> "Lastly, Facebook said it plans to form a Measurement Council made up of marketers and ad agency executives, and will also roll out a blog to more regularly communicate updates about measurement."

I read that as "we have no idea on how to measure, so please tell us what is important for you guys".

<comment><USER19> Wasn't Facebook's whole value proposition is that they knew more than the traditional advertiser/publisher partnerships?

Such a sham.

<comment><USER35> I think the original proposition was: dumb fucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Facebook which supported Clinton finds those bugs just after elections that Clinton lost.

<comment><USER37> What do advertisement metrics have to do with the election? As far as I know, the story about "Facebook + US Election" was related to people posting/sharing/therefore make trending fake new stories, which is unrelated to the Facebook ads/ad metrics side of the business.</comment></comment>


New Shit Has Come to Light: Google Is Buying Spotify (Speculation) - <AUTHOR> https://musictechpolicy.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/new-shit-has-come-to-light-google-is-buying-spotify/?curator=MusicREDEF <comment><USER2> Misleading title. The author thinks (bets) it might happen only.

<comment><AUTHOR> true, edited it to reflect that. Still think it's a worthy read.

<comment><USER2> I agree, it's well written speculation with sources.</comment></comment></comment>


Windows 10 Mail is already abysmal, and Microsoft wants to make it worse - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/probeat-windows-10-mail-is-already-abysmal-and-microsoft-wants-to-make-it-worse/ <comment><USER2> Somehow, it needs to become just as attractive to work on mundane-task apps as it is to work on the latest and greatest things. One incentive might be "pay engineers more for working on boring, critical things" but since these things are often free/included it's probably even harder for companies to imagine paying _more_ for that development.

Maybe they should take developers working on some other app and incentivize them to occasionally contribute time coding/bug-tracking/whatever on the less interesting stuff.

And mail is definitely a mess. Just today I received a "winmail.dat" attachment in a message that I couldn't even see despite it containing "only" a normal file. I had to download some 3rd party hack just to view it, as if it was 1995.</comment>


Ask HN: Do any alumni think YC was not worth it? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> There are absolutely people for whom _doing a startup_ wasn't worth it, both in retrospect, and based on the best information available to them at the time; some in YC.

I don't think YC itself was a bad choice for any of the startups I can think of; there were some cofounder disputes where one of the cofounders added negative value.

There were zombie companies, especially from after the START Fund was $150k (W11, S11, W12, S12) where teams which should have died stayed around due to YC; it might have been better in retrospect if they hadn't done YC and thus had the money to stay in hateful zombie mode.

I could potentially imagine a situation where a company would benefit from YC but would benefit more from it 6mo later, so e.g. doing YC W11 was a mistake and they should have done YC S11 instead; now I think some people are allowed to defer to the next demo day, which solves a lot of that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why wouldn't it be worth it? I mean, it only lasts 3 months, you get $17,000 and you get access to an incredible network of contacts plus very good feedback. How can't it be worth it?</comment>


Ask HN: UK Colleges - Oxford or Cambridge? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a recent US high school graduate currently on gap year working at a software startup, in no small part thanks to the advice I got on HN in April. I'm reapplying to numerous universities, one of which will be either Oxford or Cambridge (for engineering; applying to both is not possible), and I need to decide which soon.
I've been leaning towards Oxford, because it's in a larger town and offers a combined Engineering/Economics course, and I've heard that the difference in the sci/eng programs' quality in the two universities is insignificant. However, I just read about "Silicon Fen", which is evidently the UK's tech-company concentration spot, located around Cambridge. Its existence pointed me to the thought that Cambridge has a better concentration of hackers than Oxford.
So, can any HNers with experience with the two universities help with some input regarding the comparative strengths of the engineering (and science) programs, and the student bodies of the two universities? As well as a macro look at the universities, any advice on which colleges within the universities offer the best atmosphere for a budding hacker (preferably without being too bookish) would also be very helpful.
Thanks for the advice. <comment><USER3> I studied at Cambridge, only visiting Oxford to visit friends and to speak (seminars and public events).

I think there is little to choose between them. You will find people of like mind almost whereever you go, provided you seek them out.

It's true the Cambridge has the science Park, and I know of several spin-offs and high-tech companies in the area, but there are also many high-tech companies in the area of Oxford.

I believe Cambridge and surrounds has the reputation for the smaller companies, and that's probably what you're looking for.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_corridor>

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

However, I believe the much more important thing is the university and department. For that, I would suggest Cambridge has the edge, but I've not got enough data to be definite.

You might do well to see what the PhD students are doing in your area, because that will show the strengths of the staff.

</comment><comment> barry-cotter In your situation I would go for Oxford. I'm biased since I've got an uncle teaching there in Economics. Cambridge is better in Sci/Eng Oxford in Arts/Social Science. But if you wanted to do Ec you'd be better off at LSE. The faculty access at Oxbridge is incomparably better than _anywhere else_ worldwide, Ivy League, Stanford, whereever. Ox and Cam are both great, they both have good startup scenes by European standards. Cambridge's is definitely better. If only Ox has the course combination you want go there. You can improve the scene there, get a rep, like jedchristiansen at Cambridge (seed accelerator MBA thesis guy, ask him) email me

</comment><comment><USER4> I didn't go to either so I don't know. But in a previous job I hired programer grads from both & found them all excellent (& much better than Harvard - <USER2> nb. tiny sample size). I strongly recommend you make some connections in London whilst at either, and take advantage of the cheap flights/train to Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Berlin etc. for weekend breaks. Good luck!</comment>


Costa Rica boasts 99% renewable energy in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-12-costa-rica-renewable-energy.html <comment><USER2> Interesting. Unfortunately most of their energy still falls outside the common notion of "green energy" in the US:

"Three-quarters of Costa Rica's electricity is generated by hydroelectric plants"

</comment><comment><USER3> Wonderful to finally see governments in different countries finally begin to own up to this global problem, the biggest menace to the future of humanity and indeed the planet.</comment>


Boeing might represent the greatest indictment of 21st-century capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.salon.com/2019/04/27/boeing-might-represent-the-greatest-indictment-of-21st-century-capitalism_partner/ <comment><USER2> This article reminds me of ones I have read about the British class system and how it has been blamed for failures in being technically innovative despite being the nation which produced Alan Turing.

I think it might be profound yet sort of obvious - hierarchical organizations reflect the failings of their heads as their control causes the organizations to reflect their /actual/ values, the ones not on banal mission statements but how they act.

The same already happened with Detroit car companies and how they have often been a joke even domestically.

The real question is how to reform or replace Wall Street Investment "management" as they lead down hill by being too short-termist and bean counter.

They seem somewhat aware of it themselves in some ways with market caps often being higher in tech companies with "executive" shares given disproportionate control value to founders.

<comment><USER3> I've come to the conclusion that the problem with large, MBA-managed companies is that they are centrally-planned dictatorships. I think the founders typically make an effort to have the leaves make decisions, but after the founders are gone then decision-making centralizes. Beyond a certain size, central-planning is inefficient, as we've seen with Communist countries. And from my outside perspective, MBA programs teach people that central-planning is what produces "shareholder returns". Add in some hubris on the part of the CEO and the fact that control is the easiest way to get people to do what you the central-planning agency wants, and you get the large corporation.

Leadership is vision and empowering the leaves, but that takes knowing yourself (to get the vision) and courage (to let the leaves have control). It's easier to act like a boss and give yourself the title of "leader". The only difference between a boss and a dictator is that that a boss controls by economic power and a dictator controls by physical power.

(Of course, most companies and management are somewhere in-between the poles)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the massive success of air travel in the US, which Boeing is a part of, is a product of 21st-century capitalism, THEN SIGN ME UP FOR MORE OF THAT! This article seems a bit myopic.

<comment><USER5> The massive success was in the 20th century, the 21st has been a massive annoyance because of the loss of rights and privacy.

The interesting thing to me is that Boeing seems to have completely failed to restrain management pressure to perform economically and went right past the acceptable performance boundary (dynamic safety model).

Even an allegedly high reliability organization was not able to escape bean counting in the end. It would seem that capitalism's typical obsession with profit can't be reconciled with reliability on the long term.

<comment><USER6> Corporations and capitalism are different things. Capitalism is composed of a constant churn of organizations which are all failing at different rates. The point is that the system as a whole is not reliant upon the continual success of any of them. In a planned economy, the entire system depends on a single institution remaining competent indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems to focus on things from a perspective of things from a small plane pilot. So a little wider perspective might be helpful.

A 737 first off is not a Cessna like the author mentions flying. You do not get to use direct inputs easily nor do you want to have to fight stab trim because the force on the stabilizer control surfaces is muuuch higher than those on a slower flying plane. Because of this, when the 737 came out there were designs for trim systems that can help. These systems work by adjusting the trim settings for pitch using motors (like the author mentioned). However sometimes these systems would give erroneous inputs to the trim. The system might be causing incorrect trim up or down depending on the failure. This is officially known as stabilizer trim runaway. The procedure for this has been well established as a memory item meaning all pilots of 737s must be able to correct this without referencing a checklist since it is so dangerous. And it is HARD to correct because of the aerodynamic forces on the stabilizer. You can find videos of training for it. Now they introduced MCAS. A system designed to adjust trim automatically to compensate for the shift in the moments acting on the plane due to powerplant placement, etc. This adjusts the trim as well to prevent to high of angle of attack that would allow these different moments to introduce a stall situation. So what procedure should you use if it starts giving incorrect inputs? That's right, the stab trim runaway procedures, which again should be a memory item all pilots of these 737s should know and be ready and able to execute. The differences between systems that cause it just means you are taking different systems out of the control loop. This is also why I believe the FAA said it was fine to forego full airframe certification requirements. The procedures for handling the plane just didn't change drastically enough.

Yes there was negligence on Boeing's part, but I also think it's worrying that the reports seemed to indicate that the correct procedures for runaway stab trim were not followed which could have saved lives (e.g. turning MCAS back on while dealing with runaway stab trim). Also something to note is the plane in Ethiopian airways' crash was flying with "unusually high thrust settings". Remember the aerodynamic forces that make runaway stab trim a bitch to deal with? Well those forces get stronger with more speed. People are quick to point the finger at Boeing and surely they ARE at fault in some ways, but what's worrying to me is that there are pilots that are being trained that cannot perform the proper procedures that have been known since way before MCAS. Whats more is that the motors for trim from MCAS is limited to move at a rate of 2.5 degrees over 10 seconds with a pause of 5 seconds before the next adjustment. This is definitely slow enough to give pilots time to catch the runaway trim, cutout the stab trim and regain control. Anyway I am just surprised that the engineer, working for Boeing, couldn't be arsed to also give this info which allows an alternative perspective. It is bad that stab trim runaway is happening more with this system and Boeing acknowledged it and pushed patches. It is worse imo that pilots are forgetting or just not being trained on how to recognize and correct for stab trim.

Edit: Any details or numbers about the systems I got wrong please post a comment so I can correct it.

<comment><USER8> The question I have is: Would the plane have crashed if the plane was a non MAX 737?

I don't think so, but I'm open to being proved wrong. In that case the root cause of the two crashes is Boeing trying to save money.

<comment><USER7> I think it's not just that question and this is what I dislike about the whole discussion. It's all about Boeing and no one is also asking "if proper procedure was performed for runaway stab trim (again, a generalized memory item) would the plane have crashed? And it does seem the sentiment is to hell with anyone suggesting pilots and airlines involved share part of the blame despite evidence.

I could also ask, would the plane have crashed if it WASNT a max and another stab trim system failed?

It's both. We need to look at everything otherwise we will end up solving only 1 part of the issue.

Edit: To address something you mentioned about root cause (in aviation it's almost never a single root cause and I will give an example that shows such cases here). Let's look at another situation: Assume P&W designs an engine model a plane uses. The plane they are used in has in-air engine fire procedures that must be performed in order to mitigate disaster regardless of the engine model used. Now imagine the new engine design causes more engine fires. If pilots don't manage the problem appropriately when it occurs, what is the root cause? The poor engine design? Improper training from the pilot? In my opinion it's, again, both. Poor training coupled with higher chance of system issues.

<comment><USER9> The pilots and the airlines didn't design, build, and release a semi- autonomous system which isn't resilient to erroneous data, despite the failure case for that problem being catastrophic.

If an Automotive OEM released a vehicle with an adaptive cruise control system that refused to disable itself except by the human driver intervening through power cycling the vehicle, while driving, it's difficult to put much warranted blame on the driver. The OEM sold a potentially catastrophically faulty system, irrespective of that the fault can sometimes be managed into a fail- safe condition by the driver.

The reason people put the blame on Boeing is because the system implementation didn't fail, the design did.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't refuse to disable. People are mixing this up with overriding control inputs. It is still possible to take MCAS out if the control loop using stab trim cutout. However when left active it does override pilot inputs. Think of it as the alpha authority that exists on airbuses. However if you follow proper stab trim runaway procedures you cutout stab trim taking MCAS out which restores pilot authority. Again this procedure should be second nature to 737 pilots of any submodel.

In your example, if there were adaptive cruise control, I would turn off cruise control by hitting the button. Same options are present here. However it does mean that braking or acceleration would be overriden until that happens. But the real analogy is if all drivers had to be trained that you turn off cruise control in runaway. If you don't do that, well then you will crash and it's from system failure AND improper general procedure

<comment><USER9> The example analog I chose is actually a thing, and hitting the button does nothing.

The problem is in the design. Despite the fact that it's possible to defeat the failure in some instances (assuming it hopefully doesn't manifest itself too close to the disaster envelope to start with), the failure case 1) never should have happened and 2) shouldn't require unintuitive remediation.

It's bad design and bad functional-safety analysis. Neither of which fall to the fleet operator or system operator.

<comment><USER7> Yes I agree. And I'm pleading that everyone also recognise the other aspects of these.incidents such as improper basic procedure. It's all of the above.

Edit: And remember at the end of the day, these airlines and pilots agreed to fly the plane. Even in the wake of the LionAir incident. At the end of the day, the pilots choose to fly and can say no if they aren't comfortable. And if the answer to this is that there is pressure from airlines to keep flying? We just found another major issue and danger in aviation

Edit2: should clarify actually that I agree it's a bad design. Not about the procedures being "unintuitive". If the pilots think the corrective procedures are unintuitive they shouldn't fly any 737 since stab trim systems exist on all 737s and require the same corrective procedure in runaway stab trim.

<comment><USER10> Are you a pilot? If so what are your qualifications?

Have you read the ET302 preliminary report? In particular have you read page 25, section 2 "Initial findings" last bullet which I quote:

 _The crew performed runaway stabilizer checklist and put the stab trim cutout switch to cutout position and confirmed that the manual trim operation was not working._

How can you read that, and say multiple times in this thread "improper procedure"? On what basis?

You have no idea how much mental discipline it's taking me, as a pilot, to refrain from ad hominem attack. Your arguments are that bad, they are that willfully contrary to the available facts.

<comment><USER7> I get it. I understand everyone's frustration. In similar fashion I understand how unlikely it is a crew would have the mental capacity to deal with stick shakers, GPWS callouts, and still fix the problem and that is the tragedy here. However the report said they followed proper procedure but look at the data. 95% N1, turning auto trim on and off a few times, the last time causing the huge -2G bump. There also is not enough data to us yet to determine they did regain control of the plane before enabling electric trim again. I don't think in the case of runaway trim you are supposed to keep switching the cutoff and leave your plane above Vmo. Something doesn't add up according to the data imo.

<comment><USER10> This is such a bullshit response. You don't answer any of my questions. You proceed to armchair pilot. You use terms you cannot completely understand from a big picture yet claim to come at this from a big picture perspective. That's so out of order.

Do you know a power reduction causes a nose down moment and actually makes the problem worse?

What does "turning auto trim on and off" mean? Are you referring to the you're toggle it the stab trim switches flipped between normal and cutoff? If the latter you are wrong, zero evidence that happened a few times.

There was no -2 G vertical acceleration.

What you are doing is in my view a mental disturbance. You are using terms as if you know what you're talking about. You don't. You are a bullshitter.

Please stop.

<comment><USER7> Okay. Calm down for 1. Also the prelim data is there to review. The graph shows clearly there's a large plunge and there absolutely was a negative g report in the prelim showing that at the final few moments the trim settings from the FCC gave another correction. As for the cutoff, the report annotations tell you when they toggled the cutout switch. I went back and yeah actually you're right it was only once to cutoff and back to normal sorry for that mistake. However the overspeed is still supported from the data and yes the data shows vertical g forces and at the end there was a lurch of -2 Gs before total loss. It's on page 27.

As for less speed causing more nose down moment, yeah but at the same time they weren't in a descent for that portion either, nor were they nose down (this from page 26). The data shows they were oscillating though climbing slightly while they were overspeeding. In this case it could have helped to reduce the forces at play. I think it was more that they were just busy and left thrust settings where they were from takeoff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I wrote a story that became a legend, then discovered it wasn't true - <AUTHOR> https://www.cjr.org/first_person/tinazzi-motorcycle-mont-blanc-tunnel-fire-rescue.php <comment><USER2> _He was just a quiet man who had tried to do the right thing in the face of an inferno. And maybe that is enough._

Speaking as a former firefighter, I would say "Yes. Yes, that is enough."

As far as I'm concerned, _anybody_ who runs towards a fire in an attempt to help others, when everyone else is running away, is a hero. Doesn't matter if you're "officially" a firefighter, or anything else. If you display the behavior, the willingness to sacrifice, the bravery, of a firefighter, then you are one of the brotherhood. And if you pay the ultimate sacrifice in the process, you are a hero to be cherished, whether you saved 10 people, or none.

And before anybody says it... yes, I know the old saw about "not becoming another casualty, and one more person to be rescued" as well as anyone. I used to teach that stuff. But at the end of the day, while we might not _want_ civilians or untrained/unequipped people running into fires, you still have to respect and honor the courage of the people who are willing to do that.

<comment><USER3> That's not what this story is about though (admittedly IM sometime not so HO). It's about how seemingly small mistakes end up shaping an entirely made version of history, even at a time when clickbait listicles and Russian troll farms didn't control public discourse yet. If some immaterial detail like this was so grossly wrong, what else is wrong? Is there no way to trust anything we read? What is the value of decades of archives of websites and newspapers when nobody has any incentive to correct or maintain any of it?

Is it time to start building a 'web of trust' for information 'chunks', as the original PGP set out to do in the 90's for people? Should we just acknowledge that we've lost the battle on 'finding the Truth'? Those are more material questions that whether or not this one guy saved 0 or 10 people 20 years ago, and whether that warrants a motorcycle tribute ride to be named after him.

<comment><USER4> "If some immaterial detail like this was so grossly wrong, what else is wrong?"

Most likely everything. That is why any information that isn't reproducible should be considered just a story, nothing more. There might be some value to take away from it, but nothing much better than what you can get from fiction. I don't get how anyone that has played Telephone can take history seriously, there's just no chance of getting an accurate version. Even news from yesterday, with recorded audio and video, doesn't capture enough to get important details right.

<comment><USER5> "just a story" is still important if there's a lesson to learn. Whether we're discussing Aesop's fables or religion, there are a lot of stories with real- life application.

Reading the article made me feel deflated, powerless about the spread of disinformation. But mindcrime's top-level comment told me what to do (risk my life to help others), and the story made me imagine a situation when I could do that. Even though I now know the story isn't true, the way I would apply the lesson is still the same.

Having read the comment and thought about how my actions can change in the future, I now feel hopeful. I'm grateful for this community for providing that.

<comment><USER2> _But mindcrime 's top-level comment told me what to do (risk my life to help others), and the story made me imagine a situation when I could do that._

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be prescriptive here. I don't mean to tell you to go out and look for a chance to die young by risking your life. And even among trained emergency responders, there's a constant need to remind people in training to not develop "hero complex" and wind up risking yourself _needlessly_. Even firefighters do have situations where they opt for "discretion as the better part of valor."

All I intend to say is that those people who, when presented with an emergency situation, elect to put themselves in harms way for the sake of others, earn - in my mind - a certain measure of nobility and special esteem. But I don't want to encourage people to put themselves in danger when they really aren't prepared / equipped to help. I know that seems like a subtle distinction, but I'd encourage everyone to keep it in mind.

A heroic death may be noble, but it's still a death. And every death is a tragedy for someone. Wives, husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, etc. may feel terrific pride in such an event, but they'll also feel terrible pain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At least Mark Gardiner has the integrity to reflect on his mistake.

</comment><comment><USER7> The same author wrote an article about the tunnel fire in the New York Times yesterday that talks more about the overall story: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/mont-blanc- tunne...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/mont-blanc-tunnel-fire- anniversary-rescue.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> _They listened as a river of incandescent margarine ignited fuel tanks and burst the tires of abandoned vehicles._

This may be the most evocative sentence I've read this year.

<comment><USER9> It needs a comma badly I read it wrong in the article and then in this comment

incandescent margarine ,{{ ignited fuel tanks and burst the tires }} of abandoned vehicles

<comment><USER10> Huh?

The agent: "river of incandescent margarine".

What it did: "ignited fuel tanks and burst the tires"

What it did it to: "abandoned vehicles"

I do find "incandescent" hard to imagine. Because it's just fat, and it'll carbonize before becoming incandescent. Maybe "flaming margarine" or something. Also, "listened" indicated that they heard, but didn't see.

It doesn't really need punctuation. But maybe this would be clearer:

They listened as a river of incandescent margarine ignited the fuel tanks, and burst the tires, of abandoned vehicles.

Or maybe:

They listened as a river of incandescent margarine engulfed abandoned vehicles, igniting fuel tanks and bursting tires.

<comment><USER10> Belated edit: Maybe "river of incandescent margarine vapor". But it wouldn't really be margarine anymore. Without enough oxygen to fully burn, it'd be mostly a mixture of carbon particles, H2O, H2, CO and CO2. Like a candle flame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _I had drawn on the contemporaneous newspaper accounts in Val d'Aosta and Chamonix for my story._

This is a good example of why re-writing another person's stories is _not_ journalism. I've been saying that for over 25 years in newsrooms across the country. Eventually, your laziness bites you.

<comment><USER12> But he did actually do the boots on the ground research, not just copy other stories:

> I spent a week seeking out his family, friends, and coworkers and imploring > them to talk to me.

> I went to the tunnel control center, and to the local 'Carabinieri' post, > where I spoke to managers and cops who must have known that the accounts > published in 1999 were exaggerated. But all the witnesses and officials were > under gag orders, and records – including security video and recordings of > radio traffic – were sealed due to ongoing criminal and civil > investigations.

> As I write this, I've spent the last week going back over 76 pages of > handwritten notes I made on that trip.

<comment><USER13> He found no evidence contradicting the story, but none supporting it, either. There's a big risk in equating the effort expended with the quality of the final product, a lesson that applies as much in software as in journalism.

I'm very frustrated with the author for not crediting the New York Times. I don't think it's a coincidence that the story fell apart when he was commissioned to do a piece for an outfit with journalistic standards. It's possible the NYT's name opened some doors for him, too, but he doesn't describe experiencing any frustration or serious misgivings in his original investigation. He just says "in hindsight" and "I suppose a part of me always worried" but that's fifteen years too late. Clearly he approached it more critically this time, but he leaves the reason for that completely unexamined.

EDIT: Also, "He was just a quiet man who had tried to do the right thing in the face of an inferno. And maybe that is enough," clearly thinking about himself, clearly not taking responsibility.

<comment><USER14> Dude, he wrote a detailed postmortem of his own mistakes. That _is_ taking responsibility. You're projecting, for whatever reason. The sentence about the quiet man is clearly referencing the original hero of his story, who might not have saved 10 people but did try to save another man's life while risking his own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am not sure I get this - from my reading Spadino drove into a burning tunnel, drags another man into a refuge, calls the command to tell them where they are but both die.

Sounds more heroic than anything I am planning on.

Why beat up on the guy because reporters at the time and afterwards got their facts wrong.

It's not the motorcyclists fault the reporter was wrong but the sentence in the article where the reporter describes discovering _his own mistake_ something like "married to him for years and now felt cheated on" sounds ... awful.

<comment><USER16> > Sounds more heroic than anything I am planning on.

I'm not sure he planned on it, either. I think sometimes people do things because, when they find themselves in the situation, they can't _not_ do it. (But I'm still alive, so what do I know?)

<comment><USER17> In my extremely limited experience, which was at least an order of magnitude much much much less dangerous and spectacular, yeah I just kind of did the thing. There was no conscious choice involved there.

What's funny is once you're doing the thing it's not so automatic. You are making conscious decisions at that point. Except your brain feels like a supercomputer because of adrenaline or whatever else is flooding the system.

In hindsight of course I know I was probably flopping around like an overweight fish out of water hahaha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Because the truck carried flour and margarine, I was hoping the legend was going to be something about the fire started by the crash making a multi-ton sponge cake in the tunnel... Never mind...

</comment><comment><USER19> that page looks empty with uBlock origin...

<comment><USER20> Everything has "visibility: hidden !important;" set on it, for some reason, and it's only unhidden when Javascript runs.

<comment><USER21> I think its some weird wordpress script for emojis (wp-emoji-release.min.js), since I'm finding articles on taking it out of your own sites that mention render-blocking</comment></comment></comment>


We need a new document markup language – here is why - <AUTHOR> https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/we-need-a-new-document-markup-language-c22e0ec44e15/ <comment><USER2> Bit weird to say you're going to talk about syntax and then complain about syntax highlighting in markdown, which is a rendering problem.

Markdown is perfectly well suited for whatever documentation needs you have imo/e. If you need complexities not standard to CommonMark you tweak your renderer or inject some html as a preprocessing step, for example adding mathjax for formulae or say, a syntax highlighter.

Markdown is simple enough to use and simple enough to extend for your deployment. Haven't had any issues with very complex docs started in MD.

</comment><comment><USER3> They all look horrible for documentation apart from YAML, which IMHO is a suitable compromise with add-ons for tables, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> looks cool -- I would use it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Latex.</comment>


Internet Explorer 6 (JavaScript) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/ie6/

<comment><USER2> This is by Mr.doob, the main developer of three.js.

</comment><comment><USER3> A horrible memory

</comment><comment><USER4> awesome, brings back so many memories.

</comment><comment><USER5> WHY!?</comment>


GNU UPC - <AUTHOR> http://www.gccupc.org/ <comment><USER2> UPC++ follows the same paradigm but is much easier to use and has better documentation.

[https://bitbucket.org/berkeleylab/upcxx/wiki/Home](https://bitbucket.org/berkeleylab/upcxx/wiki/Home)

<comment><USER3> Both only have LaTeX/PDF documentation like it's 1985? Modern documentation for effective use during programming looks like this:

[https://golang.org/ref/spec#Labeled_statements](https://golang.org/ref/spec#Labeled_statements)

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language- refe...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language- reference/keywords/new)

[https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/models/fields/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/models/fields/)

etc. ...

<comment><USER4> Check out the sweet 1995-era website: [http://upc.gwu.edu/](http://upc.gwu.edu/)

Not a project that seems to be into recent trends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Despite the name, this doesn't appear to actually be a GNU project. Neither the web site links to gnu.org nor the FSF, and it doesn't show up in GNU's list of their own software projects: [https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html)

It's cool enough to extend GCC like this, but they really oughtn't make it seem like an official project.

<comment><USER6> [https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/gupc.html](https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/gupc.html)

From the sidebar link "GNU UPC at gnu.org" on gccupc.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How different is the UPC language from C?

<comment><USER8> I would like more info on this as well, it kind of looks like C + built-in MPI.

<comment><USER9> That about sums it up. Coarray fortran is a «competitor» that seems a lot easier to use.

<comment><USER10> Coarray Fortran is part of the Fortran 2008 standard, so support for it is very widespread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No Arm arch? Where can one find Power these days?

<comment><USER12> Unified Parallel C is definitely oriented towards supercomputer markets, where ARM is not a major player and never has been. Supercomputers used to be heavily based on POWER, MIPS, and Sparc, but around 2003 or so, x86 dominated the market. According to TOP 500, something like 80+% of supercomputers are running Intel processors (not even AMD is really competitive anymore), with POWER making up most of the non-x86 crowd (there's a handful of Sparcs running around, plus some Chinese home-grown architectures).

Something else that's happened in the past 6 years or so has been the rise of NVidia boards to get high TFLOPS counts. If I look at the mailing lists, it seems interest in UPC drops off somewhere around 2011-2012, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the rise of GPGPU in HPC applications has something to do with it.

<comment><USER13> > _plus some Chinese home-grown architectures_

I've heard tidbits of info about the existence of these. What are some relevant search keywords I could start with?

<comment><USER14> I started with the Wikipedia article on Chinese Supercomputing [1] but working from there, two more interesting ones are the SW26010 [2] and the Loongson [3]

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SW26010)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Credit card skimming malware targeting Diebold ATMs - <AUTHOR> http://www.sophos.com/security/blog/2009/03/3577.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "The main Trojan executable contains the code to handle the _magnetic card reader_ using _undocumented Diebold Agilis 91x functions_ , inject code to ATM's processes, parse transactions in Ukrainian, Russian and US currencies and _use printer_ , probably for printing the stolen data. I am also fairly sure that some of the instructions to the keyboard for typing PIN numbers are connected with hooks to log the captured PINs."

And

"By uncovering code that appears to encrypt data and a possible alternative user interface it seems to me that the stolen data is encrypted, probably to allow the attackers to use "money mules" to retrieve the data in person."

Just wow.

ZeroDay has more on this <http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2908></comment>


US police arrest two boys after vandalism killed 500k bees - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42730201 <comment><USER2> Odd word choice on the part of the BBC. The police aren't 'U.S.' police: they're Iowa police.</comment>


Terence Tao solves the Erdős Discrepancy Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/maths-whiz-solves-a-master-s-riddle-1.18441 <comment><USER3> There are at least three exciting things here:

1\. A well-known conjecture in number theory has been proven (by Terry Tao, natch).

2\. Several elements in the proof arose from an innovative collaborative approach to mathematical research (the Polymath Project, specifically Polymath5).

3\. The result will be published in a newly announced cost-effective open- access journal, giving the new journal a big early prestige boost.

Every one of these is a big deal; taken together, they give us a glimpse of the future of mathematics (which, per William Gibson, is already here, just not very evenly distributed).

<comment><USER4> I hope it's the future for a lot of fields, not just mathematics, but I'm very glad to see things like this happening and big kudos are deserved by all involved.

Even the article here is better than most--I love how it linked even to the blog comment that gave Tao the impetus to investigate the connection and I would love to see things like this become standard for proper scientific reporting (i.e. if something happened online, give us a link). That should be standard practice, but it's so often neglected that it makes this article much more thorough than the average.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin >> Though the proof has not undergone a rigorous peer review, experts expressed no concern over whether it would survive a critical look.

Such is people's confidence in Terence Tao - not unfounded by any means - <USER2> the result has not been peer reviewed yet. Tim Gowers has said that they'll be conservative in their review process [0] so any errors will probably be picked up quickly.

[0] [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis- an...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv- overlay-journal/)

<comment><USER5> Any use of the word "conservative" outside a quantitative comparison should at least be disregarded and at most set off alarm bells that a deceit is underway. In no case should you draw any further conclusions about the outcome based on some presumed directionality of such a qualitative modifier. "Conservative compared to what?"

<comment><USER6> ... what?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Discussion from a few days back on the paper itself: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10238373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10238373)

<comment><USER8> There's also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247132).

The OP is a pretty fun article to read, so let's not count it as a dupe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> While we're on Erdős and Terrance Tao, Terrance has an Erdős number of 2 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_by_Erd%C5%91s_n...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_by_Erd%C5%91s_number#.232)) so whilst having met Erdős as a boy ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao#Personal_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Tao#Personal_life)) he never collaborated with him on a paper. (Probably due to differences in ages).

It's amazing to see the influence Paul Erdős had on people. There is a children's story (that I read to my kids) about his incredible life. [http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Who-Loved- Math/dp/1596433078](http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-Who-Loved- Math/dp/1596433078)

<comment><USER10> *Terence

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be cool if somenone annotated this paper on Fermat's Library, would to get a better grasp of it: [http://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-erdos- discrepancy-problem](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-erdos-discrepancy- problem)

Anyone? =)

</comment><comment><USER12> anyone know where the comment was made?

<comment><USER13> Looks like [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/sign-patterns- of-t...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2015/09/06/sign-patterns-of-the- mobius-and-liouville-functions/#comment-459021)

<comment><USER14> Yes, it's listed on the nature article...

<comment><USER4> Not sure why this was downvoted. There is a link to the comment at the end of the article, which surprised me a little in a good way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> $500 is close to $6.5K inflation adjusted. Although it makes sense to frame it.

</comment><comment><USER16> When a chemist makes a discovery , do they call them a "chem whizz"?

</comment><comment><USER17> Subtitle: "Terence Tao successfully attacks the Erdős Discrepancy Problem by building on an online collaboration."

First paragraph: "A mathematical puzzle that resisted solution for 80 years — including computerized attempts to crack it — appears to have yielded to a single mathematician."

This irks me.

<comment><USER18> _> by building on an online collaboration." [...] appears to have yielded to a single mathematician."_

 _> This irks me._

It didn't bother me because I don't interpret the "collaboration" and "single mathematician" as contradictory. In other words, all mathematics is built upon group contributions whether the collaboration happens digitally online or via letters transported across 17th century continental Europe.

In this case, "single mathematician" doesn't mean a person who discovered _every_ insight and connected _all_ the dots. Instead, it means the one who connected the _last_ dot. So far, it looks like Tao solved the last step of the puzzle and no one else independently solved it and submitted a proof at the same time. Contrast this situation to the invention of calculus which was simultaneously created by Newton and Leibniz.

<comment><USER19> > _Contrast this situation to the invention of calculus which was > simultaneously created by Newton and Leibniz._

There were plenty of precursors to calculus, coming from the likes of Descartes, Fermat and Pascal. For example: [http://www-history.mcs.st- and.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_c...](http://www-history.mcs.st- and.ac.uk/HistTopics/The_rise_of_calculus.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> See also the blogpost on Tim Gowers' blog : [https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/edp28-problem- solved...](https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/edp28-problem-solved-by- terence-tao/) :).

<comment><USER21> Indeed, and submitted here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247132](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10247132)

The title there was:

        Gowers on Terrence Tao's solution
        to the Erdős discrepancy problem

The title here started out as:

        Maths whizz solves
        a master's riddle

I suspect the click-baity title helped this submission get early views and early votes. The other, more factual title was probably just mostly ignored. It would be interesting to know how many click-throughs that earlier submission got.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one who noticed the smoothest self-promotion ever in the comment section?

 _Very interesting post, such a good read. Glad I came across it. Flitwick Blinds often use advanced mathematics when calculating conservatory roof blinds or shaped shutters at[http://www.flitwick- blinds.co.uk*](http://www.flitwick-blinds.co.uk*)

<comment><USER16> Please don't repost spam comments here.</comment></comment>


Wasted $250 a month over the last 5 months This is how I fixed it - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6422117696980258816 <comment><AUTHOR> I've wasted $250 a month in SaaS costs in the last 5 months! This is how I fixed it.

Hey guys, I'm King an undergrad from Stanford. Over the last couple of years, I've been running multiple startups and an outsourcing dev shop based in the Philippines. I've been repeatedly fucked by bloating SaaS expenses — especially when it comes to old projects (with server and domain allocation) or old employees who have transitioned out (but are still on Adobe / Sketch / etc ). With multiple personal credit cards of co-founders used on different line items, it gets hard to reimburse each other. It gets worse when handling multiple projects! So… Fuck SaaS!

Not that we hate SaaS products, we actually love them a lot! That's why we use them all the time. Over the weekend, me and my buddy, Jig, who was a PM for Growth at a Y-Combinator Start up, hacked together an enterprise subscription manager to identify unused subscriptions, organize expenditure, and save your runway!

We're running the beta right now and if you'd like to save money now, comment "Fuck SaaS! with your e-mail and country!"</comment>


It's Time to Stop Spending Taxpayer Dollars on Elon Musk and Cronyism - <AUTHOR> http://dailysignal.com/2016/11/13/its-time-to-stop-spending-taxpayer-dollars-on-elon-musk-and-cronyism/ <comment><USER2> I'm all for at as soon as we pass a carbon tax and then use the money to lower middle class income taxes.</comment>


MapTiler: Map overlay, cut map tiles for Google Maps, GIS layers and mobile apps - <AUTHOR> https://www.maptiler.com <comment><USER2> I didn't realise open street map had made so much progress, the demo page looks really nice. The satellite view is not very detailed where I was checking but other than that I'm very impressed with the offering.

<comment><USER3> Maptiler is _not_ OpenStreeMap - they're one of the many companies who productize OSM.

Which is exactly the way it's meant to be.

<comment><USER2> I didn't understand that part. If I remember right, the open street map website used to have a demo page of their own. In any case I'm very happy to see this.

<comment><USER4> OpenStreetMap's own demo page is openstreetmap.org (or osm.org). I find lima's reply also a little confusing, but I think he just means that it's fine for companies to take the data and use it for a map (and indeed it is), but I don't understand how that makes this not openstreetmap. I mean, technically OSM is the database, and the demo on their own page "is" not openstreetmap because openstreetmap isn't a demo but only a database... but I'm not sure he meant to be pedantic so I'm not sure what it meant.

<comment><USER3> "Is" as in "it's not the same entity".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately I bought a license for MapTiler and then I lost it when I reinstalled my pc. They preferred to do email ping-pong instead of giving me my license back. Apparently you have to "release" the license before reinstalling the pc. Because this is what you have to put up with if you try to be fair and actually pay for software...

<comment><USER6> Reminds me especially of computer games in general and some single player Assasins Creed title specifically which had always online copy protection. The copy protection server was DDOSed meaning players that bought the game couldn't play or would always be kicked out of the game once the server went down again.

On the other hand the pirates played the game without problems once they circumvented the proctection (a week?) after the game release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can vouch for their MapTiler Engine product. I consulted with a company that used it to create map tiles of mosaicked images captured by drones. MapTiler Engine worked great. Not cheap, but in our eyes, it definitely was worth the price. Thumbs up for MapTiler.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a pretty nice piece of software. Unfortunately the affordable version is far too restricted and the 'useful' version is stupidly expensive. Had it been less than $1000 I probably would have bought a license.

<comment><USER9> Market Size. You can't sell stuff for 39.99 if only 20 people in the world will buy it

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very cool, I recently wrote a map tiler that runs on AWS lambda and supports real-time tiling at any zoom level and real-time reprojection. Planning to open source it soon.

<comment><USER11> Keen to see this! Please contact me it you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The examples on the site totally hijack my back button on iOS.

<comment><USER13> I hope you get your back button back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used MapTiler to generate a graph of the largest connected nodes on the Disqus network: [http://webrender.net/disqus- universe/](http://webrender.net/disqus-universe/)

Found it fast and easy to use. Couldn't believe how difficult it would have been to render the tiles otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've used one of their mobile apps to overlay a hiking map on the satellite map and (iirc) cache the tiles in the area. Very useful to have gps positioning on a map that may only be available on paper, pdf, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yet another landing page influenced by Stripe. :)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is raster tiles, not vector.

<comment><USER18> Both are available, see [https://www.maptiler.com/maps/](https://www.maptiler.com/maps/)

<comment><USER17> The software Maptiler is for raster output. Not sure what that map page is supposed to demo.

<comment><USER19> It says "Continue to MapTiler Cloud" in the bottom right corner. [https://www.maptiler.com/cloud/](https://www.maptiler.com/cloud/)

Looks like it's an online map editor/map viewer that supports both vector an raster images.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What CDN do you use?

</comment><comment><USER21> stripe.css

<comment><USER22> Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER23> Probably that the design takes inspiration from Stripe's one.

<comment><USER24> Looks like every other product page, though. They all look the same.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RSA-4096 / ElGamal-3072 – Physical Side-Channel Key-Extraction Attacks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/papers/handsoff-20140731.pdf

<comment><USER2> More evidence that if you can't physically secure the hardware, all bets are off. The ability to conduct the attack through an Ethernet cable does add a new dimension to the attack surface, however.

I guess this is also another reason why TEMPEST defines shielding standards to help mitigate these side-channel attacks.</comment>


US government says Theranos lab poses 'immediate jeopardy to patient safety' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/27/10853340/government-says-theranos-lab-poses-immediate-threat-to-public-safety <comment><USER2> Most of the discussion is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10983747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10983747)

</comment><comment><USER3> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10983747](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10983747), which has the more active discussion. Normally we'd prefer the earlier submission (which this one was by a few minutes), but that one is ranking higher on the page, which suggests that people found the original source more informative.</comment>


30 years of SGML - <AUTHOR> http://sgmljs.net/blog.html <comment><AUTHOR> OP here (long time lurker).

I'm hanging around on HN this morning (CEST/Berlin local time), and then again in the afternoon GMT-7/SF local time) to answer questions.

Looking forward to have some discussion on the state of markup languages, and whether the HN crowd considers this still relevant.</comment>


Ideas aren't worthless - <AUTHOR> http://bernardi.me/2012/10/ideas-arent-worthless/ <comment><USER2> We sit in the YC house. We full well know that we rarely end up with the idea we start out with. This makes the idea itself, worthless, and starting to validate any idea much more important and valuable.

Ideas are relatively worthless because there's so many out there that are reasonably possible. "Software is eating the world".

Ideas are also relatively worthless because any idea person is paralyzed by at least 47 of their own before someone shows up asking to sign an NDA for the 48th. Ask any technically capable business minded person.

Ideas are also worthless compared to execution on them.

Ideas are also worthless without the implementation expertise and marketing expertise to get it real, and the money that it might take, whether its funding or bootstrapped.

If the idea doesn't come with an owner who can code or market, they better be bringing their own money or some way to pay for the time of others. I have plenty of my own reasonably validated ideas and niches dying for attention that I could rather lose time and my own money on.

The "idea" guys in my life know now an idea is worthless without the real legs that will prop it up, the skills to build, the skills to build the right thing, and the skills to find and reach your audience. Giving an idea more value than traction with a paying audience is confusing activity with results in many ways.

Ideas might be more valuable to someone who doesn't have any other value to add in getting from activity to a measurable result.

Got an idea that still stands that test? It's much more worth talking about :)

<comment><USER3> One thing to consider is the negative value of executing on a bad idea. This increases the abstract value of good ideas because the bad ideas actively sap execution potential.

<comment><USER4> That's total sunk-cost fallacy. You can only work on what you think makes sense at the time. Don't borrow trouble, or even borrow hindsight-bias.

<comment><USER3> Huh? I'm talking in the abstract. Yes, people work on what they think makes sense, but they don't _know_ what makes sense. Therefore an "idea guy" who tends to have good ideas has a value that may never be achieved by an engineer who can execute phenomenally well but tends to have bad ideas. Just because you can't quantify it doesn't mean it's not there.

<comment><USER4> Yes, people do know what makes sense to work on. That's why they choose to work on it, whatever it is at whatever time. They can change if they want, or if it doesn't make sense to do that thing anymore. What quantification is available? Do you mean "articulable?"

<comment><USER3> You're talking past my original point and quibbling over semantics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course ideas aren't worthless.

The reason this meme became popular here is that the audience to Hacker News is predominately developers, and many are sick of people that don't value the ability to execute and try to negotiate as if the developer would be lucky to join them.

Business = Marketing + Advertising + Sales + Idea + Implementation + Finance

Even this is too simple though. However, my point is that business isn't just about "execution" of an idea into a product...

The most important thing is working in skilled, multi-discipline teams where people will support each others weak areas.

<comment><USER6> >> many are sick of people that don't value the ability to execute

>> business isn't just about "execution" of an idea into a product

The ability to execute is not limited to engineering. It's also applicable to the business side (ability to successfully secure funding, find product market fit, create a marketing and pricing strategy that works, etc).

The other thing is that you cannot neatly separate ideas and execution. As you break a high level problem into its components, there are ideas at every lower level that will allow you to succeed. A high level idea cannot succeed without the supporting lower level ideas (strategies and tactics) in a variety of disciplines (marketing, product, engineering, etc). If we take Facebook as an example: many people at several universities had the broad idea, but only one set of people also had the lower level strategies and tactics to turn that idea into a multi-billion dollar company.

My take on this: good high level ideas _are_ worthless without the appropriate low level supporting ideas.

<comment><USER7> _you cannot neatly separate ideas and execution._

This. ^^^ Its all about the performance envelope. And who actually knows it.

Ideas are both general "ideas" (a product, or about a theory, or strategy) as well as "ideas" are about problem solving (practical, tactical, etc). A top "technical" guy in any field will be an idea guy, strictly because he is a problem solver that can abstract his experience back into higher-level principles.

Example: Programming requires creative problem solving. Likewise, you'd be amazed at how much "creativity" happens in accounting, tax, and legal professions. ALthough much of this is of the practical variety ("artisanal") rather than of the blue sky ("arty").

LIkewise, a top "Idea" guy in any field with have both levels of abstraction covered. I think somebody once made the remark that if you dream it but can't ship it, its more like a hallucination than an actual idea. So maybe the bad ones are not the "idea guys" but "the hallucinators". And in that case, yes, their value is certainly questionable. =D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find this to be very wrong on many levels. I understand the OP worked in VC, so he comes from a place of knowledge, but let me deconstruct the argument slightly.

\- "The idea is the core of a company and what defines it entirely"

But ideas change. An early stage company might work on a completely different idea next week, or a company that has not found product/market fit might pivot. Will the company have changed? It will still have the same founding team, still have the same employees, and the same tech. I don't think there is any evidence (none was provided) for how an idea "defines a company entirely".

\- "That's where an investor's evaluation will start and end"

Bullshit. I know you are (were?) an investor, but it would be wrong to say that your method of evaluation is the way all people evaluate. Could a team of idiots with a great idea get funding? To give a pathelogic case, could a team with an amazing idea to change social networking, made up of unproven non- coders in a distributed team spread across the Eastern Europe, get funding? No.

\- "Idea = "market + problem + opportunity""

Well, if you redefine the term, its quite easy to say it has value. But even this disregards the value of the team.

\- "If an investor turns you down, they probably think that, in order of probability: your idea is bad"

Again, different investors are different. There are plenty who look at the team first.

\- "BUT, extraordinary teams executing extremely well on any idea doesn't guarantee success."

Any team worth anything will pivot away from a bad idea.

But the biggest criticism I think I have is that the reason "ideas are worthless", is because you can't think up a good market, opportunity, and customer base. You start with the kernel of an idea, and refine it through continuous customer development, until you have a product which may differ substantially from the initial idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Paul.

Quick comments: \- "Ideas change".

I agree but, as I say in the post, this is true only at very early stages, and the best companies tend not to pivot. But this is a personal opinion.

\- "Could a team of idiots with a great idea get funding? To give a pathelogic case, could a team with an amazing idea to change social networking, made up of unproven non-coders in a distributed team spread across the Eastern Europe, get funding? No."

I say this on the post, so I don't see what the comment is about. I say that after the idea, the investors look at the team and decide if they are the ones that can execute on it.

\- "Again, different investors are different. There are plenty who look at the team first."

This might be true, what I'm saying in my post is that unconsciously I think that the idea you present yourself with will definitely change their opinion about the team. It's a hypothesis that comes with my observation of the funding market. I could be totally off.

\- "Any team worth anything will pivot away from a bad idea."

See my last point about pivots. I agree with this, but again, this needs to happen at the earliest stages possible.

Thanks for your comments btw!

<comment><USER9> _I say that after the idea, the investors look at the team_

However you start out by saying '[the idea is] where an investor's evaluation will start and end.' Setting your article up with a hyperbolic position and then gradually backing away with exceptions is a link-bait type article style which makes you look more concerned with attention than reasonable discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the notion of ideas being worthless is, essentially, an overreaction to the trend of ideas being grossly overvalued at the expense of more practical considerations.

In my mind, this belief is best illustrated in the rapid rise of startups who have an interesting idea, but very little market validation or plans for monetization.

As with most complex topics, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Ideas are not worthless, but they're certainly not worth much. To be valuable (in a business sense) an idea must also be coupled with a strong need or desire derived from knowledge of the market. Add to that a strong plan for execution and you've got something of value.

I'm certainly not suggesting that these elements are always known from the beginning, but for an idea to grow in value, I think these factors need to be taken into consideration.

<comment><USER11> I would think that the idea arises as a result of the need/desire and not the other way around. I couldn't agree more with the idea that value is the result of many factors including the idea, the plan, the team, the environment. Claiming that value is a result of X makes for an interesting claim/discussion, but in my experience, is hardly ever true. Value is the result of many, many different factors, including all those that you listed (need/desire, knowledge of the market, a plan for execution, resources, timing, etc). Nothing is as simple as we try to make it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They are worthless, you can't sell them. They are not useless, you can use them.

<comment><USER13> Just because you cant sell something does not mean that it has no value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My day job is web app development, but for the past year or so I've dedicated much of my spare time to making games. Or, more accurately, I've been _trying_ to make games. So far I've just published only one, a mobile game that was not successful and, I have to admit in hindsight, really wasn't very good.

When it comes to game development in particular, I've heard it over and over again that 'ideas are worthless.' But it's become obvious to me that the exact opposite is true: ideas are _everything._ What I've been struggling to do in this past year is idea-forging, basically. I've been desperately clawing my way towards an elegant game idea which is both (1) fun/unique/interesting and (2) small enough in scope that I can create it in my spare time. At many points I've thought I've had such an idea, only to realize that the idea wasn't that great or the scope was much larger than I anticipated after some prototyping.

I completely agree with the article when it comes to how difficult it is to evaluate ideas before they've been implemented: Good ideas probably don't often initially look like good ideas. And bad ideas often look incredibly enticing. And I'm pretty sure that truly new ideas almost always look like bad ideas until you've actually seen them in action. (I guess this is part of why we see so many sequels and remakes from established game companies these days. New game ideas are risky, hard to evaluate, and probably expensive to prototype.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Ok Ideas aren't "worthless".

However, ideas are worth less then execution. Execution includes the investigation into the market and the gaining of knowledge of the technologies and refactoring of potential solutions to the underlying pain.

Given this - the "idea" guy should never, ever, be compensated more then those who execute.

And ideally, everyone should be in the executing group. There shouldn't ever be an "idea" person.

<comment><USER6> >> And ideally, everyone should be in the executing group. There shouldn't ever be an "idea" person.

Agree 100%. Instead of an "idea" person, opt for a "business" person. A "business" person can do the idea person's job and several more. That means he can bring much more value to the table in a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Of course not. Words aren't worthless either. Neither are numbers. But if the only thing you have is a word or a number, you don't really have much, and it's the same way with ideas.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well... if you define it as "market + problem + opportunity". Even then you don't have everything covered. If you are going to go that route you might as well broaden the definition.

Ideas = "market + problem + opportunity + solution + financials + Porter's 5 forces analysis + implementation plan + team"

I think it is called a Business Plan.

</comment><comment><USER18> I submitted this recently but this is probably a good place to link to it too: <http://1014.org/?article=468>

Justin Frankel (Winamp, Gnutella, etc) writes that "Ideas are worth a lot to society, but not much to individuals. Execution is the opposite."

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't agree that the industry is saying that ideas are worthless. Let's not forget that the "no idea" entry in the last batch of YC funding was experimental, which I am curious to find out what came out of it and what were the results. Also, I think the reason the regular batch of YC funding puts so much emphasis on teams is because it's a good guarantee that the idea will be executed one way or the other. YC gets a lot of entries from people that, at the end of the day, they don't really know or they don't have a history working with them. Dealing with a team of strangers is definitely safer that dealing with a single person.

</comment><comment><USER20> Worth of product = (quality of idea) * (quality of execution).

An idea, on its own, is worth nothing (good idea * no execution = nothing).

HOWEVER...

Kickstarter (and other similar companies) are changing this notion a bit. Many companies have raised significant capital off of ideas alone, although producing a convincing video takes no small effort and the well-funded campaigns are usually run by people who have done their fair share of execution in the past. Capital does not equal profit necessarily, but it can if an excess of capital is raised.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ideas are the result of a process: brilliance / talent / skill leads to understanding and insight, which identifies valuable needs and lacks, which then get synthesized into an idea.

The idea is the final product of that process, that's why it's normally dismissed as worthless. An idea by itself is like the combination to a lock for a case you don't have, which is in a place you don't know.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Bad ideas are cheap. Good ideas are extremely rare and executing them is incredibly hard."

And the only way to tell them apart is to execute them.

</comment><comment><USER23> Not ideas. Belief. There are tons of good ideas that you dismiss. There are tons of shitty ideas that you act upon. The difference is that one will call out to you and say "Make me happen" when the others don't, regardless of how many rational arguments exist for picking one or the other.

Develop healthy beliefs so that you can believe in healthy ideas.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Idea = "market + problem + opportunity" that's quite far from idea, that's > almost business plan

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks yamalight. I just think that when people refer to "idea" they refer to much more than that, and should.

Imho business plan is way more than that and includes hiring plans, product timeline, marketing strategies etc.

While idea doesn't just come from "hey wouldn't it be cool if.." but usually entails a much deeper thought process about a market and an opportunity. Or at least it should.

<comment><USER8> You've redefined the meaning of "idea". Would it be safe to say that an "idea" - in its traditional meaning, as understood by everyone else - is worthless?

<comment><AUTHOR> The point is that often the solution idea is derived from the market + opportunity.

So I'd say that every idea who didn't come from that understanding and observation is worthless, the ones that are conscious reasonings based on a lot of factors are not.

Deal? :)

<comment><USER8> I think you're saying that ideas are worthless, but ideas can become valuable when combined with good execution (involving market and opportunity, etc)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you think ideas are worth something, I have a huge pile of them I will gladly sell you.

<comment><USER26> Same. I have many ideas for interesting products. These ideas are not of value in themselves and I'll happily hand most of them off for the asking (I would in fact back in kickstarter if anyone seems able to execute.)

Now, an idea + something else can be of value, but then it is beyond a mere idea. An idea which has been validated by market research to show its marketable and at least enough technical research to give a rough idea of development costs and production costs can be valuable, but then you have added a lot to it.

Even just an idea + a detailed plan for researching and then developping the idea can be valuable, but again that has at least added something.

I won't quite go so far as to say that a bare idea is worthless (absolutes often make me hesitate), but without something more it is worth very little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good article. The Valley preconception that great execution on a bad idea will fix things always rang a bit hollow to me. Seems to me to be the most common cause of failure - people build great stuff for problems which don't exist.

<comment><USER28> I think the idea (hah) there is not that great execution fixes a bad idea, but that a great team will discover that the idea sucks and move away from it while executing. Great execution on a bad idea is not great execution.

<comment><USER27> True but harder than it sounds in practice. People (1) fall in love with ideas for long times and (2) are worried about being labelled (or seeing themselves) as quitters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The relationship between ideas and execution is not a sum of the parts, but more like a multiplier.

Excellent idea (1.0) * Excellent execution (1.0) = Excellent result (1.0)

Mediocre idea (0.5) * Excellent execution (1.0) = Mediocre result (0.5)

<comment><USER30> That's pretty Arbitrary. I prefer

Excellent idea (π) * Excellent execution (2.0) = Excellent result (2π)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> about NDA: I've worked with a friend on an idea. It was my idea. Because of the way he worked I decided I don't want to continue on that project. He continued anyway. The funny thing is that even though I told him all the details of my idea and I helped him even after I stopped working, he didn't build my idea. The result was similar with what was done before and so was not enough to differentiate in the market. Essentially he did all the easy stuff without understanding why it was so important to do the hard/new stuff.

</comment><comment><USER32> Paul Graham is wrong. The focus should be on great teams executing good ideas. Execution matters - but you need an idea to execute. Changing ideas doesn't mean the ideas don't matter.

</comment><comment><USER33> Ideas are indeed worthless today. But to believe that completely is stupidity.

Internet, as of today, is a gold rush. Anyone worth his programming skill can work on an idea and get funded. But then, with the passing of time, all the low hanging fruits will be gone. Once we reach that point, good ideas will become scarce. Great ideas may not even emerge. VC funding will be gone too. Perhaps, in a decade or so.

Internet based companies are extremely easy to replace today. A chilling fact but true. Compare this with firms like Citibank, British Petroleum, etc. They have been here for decades and will be here. The same cannot be said for companies like Facebook and to a large extent Apple.

<comment><USER34> As long as new technology emerges, new opportunities will emerge with it. There's also reason to believe that technological change is accelerating, leading to ever more possible great ideas.

Your 'perhaps in a decade or so there will be no more great ideas' reminds me of many failed predictions about the saturation of technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ideas are seeds. Figure out that analogy on your own.

</comment><comment><USER36> Well written article, but I think this is the default viewpoint.</comment>