Why things might have taken so long - <AUTHOR> https://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2017/12/31/16417/ <comment><USER2> I'd like to add my perspective as a struggling inventor. I can't speak to conditions 50k years ago, but a number of the challenges listed are still pretty relevant, and I've had to justify "why are things taking so long" to my friends and family enough times to pay close attention to this.

The big factors I see are: 'poverty trap', 'crude hacks', and 'full-time craftsman'. These interact. For example, most people need a day job. Even in R&D shops, day jobs are largely concerned with marginal improvements. I spent 12 years working as an R&D physicist, but I had to do my inventions on my own time because they weren't relevant to the incremental improvement products I was paid to develop. It's very hard to spend time working on a home run when your competition is hitting a thousand singles, and that is especially true with regards to possible uses of your time for paying the bills.

The craftsman thing is a big deal. I suck as a craftsman, mainly because I'm usually doing something for the first time. Need to weld it? Guess I'm learning how to weld. Need to polish it? Time to learn again. MATLAB is too slow? Hello C++. Oh, hey, now electronics are surface mount? Time to learn how to solder all over again. So, unless you are inventing something in a field you have specialized in as a craftsperson, everything you build kinda sucks. Then you have to figure out - is the problem with the idea or the implementation? Is there a different implementation which would be easier to build? What techniques do I have to learn to do that?

The workaround for this is to work with specialized craftspeople. Unfortunately, this adds different challenges. Now you have to pay them ('poverty trap') or convince them it's worthwhile (I didn't see 'social proof' on the list, but lets put it under value). Now you have to manage a project, which is a different skill set than inventing something in the first place. Sometimes, it's better going back to being your own craftsman.

In modern times, then you get to go to commercialization, which is the barrier which kills most inventions because the inventor rarely has the skills to do this right, and the people with the skills aren't usually incentivized properly to do it for them.

So, in short, I see the biggest problems for inventors not in the mental realm, but in the social. Inventors generally need help, and it is not until after the invention is a success that people see the value.

<comment><USER3> You touch on a very real social dystopia. What's worse is that it's happening quietly, under the scenes.

Silicon Valley undervalues the aimless tinkerers and overvalues the incremental bootcamp coders.

<comment><USER4> The keywords there are "aimless" and "incremental". I think those properties are correctly valued in any fast-paced workplace.

I think one of the things that career inventors need to overcome is selling themselves. Often the fun part is in the work of inventing, but conveying the value of the process is just as important and less straightforward.

<comment><USER5> Did you even read his post? He explicitly stated that the multi-role problem is what is killing most inventions. If everyone would have to be his own salesman- there wouldnt be any inventors at all- just people trying to sell each other rocks for berries.

What is needed is a inventor currency- that allows for a exchange of services and favours, without it being abused as a source of cheap labour.

<comment><USER3> We see this happen in ICO-land especially. A lot of ideas are being marketed with absolutely zero substance or scientific innovation behind them.

Innovators like Berners-lee, Shawn Fanning, Satoshi Nakamoto, etc. plant seeds which grow into trees. Businessmen, lawmen, and psychology-manipulators fight over who gets to pick the fruit, sometimes they destroy the tree in the process. Sometimes, they even say that the fruit is not allowed to exist.

This is a massive inequity in power, and it's going to change soon. "Management" is the enemy of innovation. I've stopped looking at what old, rich, white and asian men are doing, and started looking more at what youth are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone smarter than me noted that most science fiction has badly missed the mark of what the present and near future will look like b/c the assumption was that power sources would trend towards zero cost ("too cheap to meter") and that this would enable all sorts of interesting world altering gizmos's like jetpacks, flying cars, physics defying spacecraft etc.

What actually happened is that communication density exploded upward (pony express, telegraph, radios, phones, industrial printing, computers, etc.) at the same time that communication cost plummeted (aka I'm paying a flat rate for internet access and video chatting with people all over the globe).

And I think this is still the case, that we generally still look down on communications as a kind of lesser technology compared to power gizmos. When if anything it should be the opposite, that the ability to communicate so much more effectively across all of humanity has smeared the ideas and inventions around much faster and more thoroughly than anyone really considers.

Why did things take so long? Because everything had to be individually re- invented, we had no shoulders of giants.

<comment><USER7> It's not just power sources vs communications. People always assume that the future will simply be like present only more so.

After two world wars, people assumed the future would be wars of tremendous destruction.

When aviation was growing fast, people assumed the future would be flying everything.

During the space race, people assumed the future would be space everything.

During the growth of nuclear power, people assumed the future would be atomic powered everything.

This fails to match reality, because the future doesn't arrive as if we are barreling down a highway at an ever increasing speed. Advances tend to be a left turn down a road you couldn't reach before. Rather than building ever faster jets, we went to space. Rather than going further into space, we built communication satellites etc...

Our current 'Internet' age will be no different. The 'next big thing' will not be Internet v2, but it will be something that could only exist with the internet as a prerequisite.

<comment><USER8> > People always assume that the future will simply be like present only more > so.

Thanks for your thought. It reminded me a little bit about an interview with peter thiel where he responded to a question about the future. I guess popular culture in tech moves past ideas rather quickly and generally seems to jump from trend to trend until realizing the value of a trend.

[https://youtu.be/ryFB6mvy4uE?t=26m38s](https://youtu.be/ryFB6mvy4uE?t=26m38s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        > Having external thinking tools is a big deal. Modern
        > 'human intelligence' relies a lot on things like writing
        > and collected data, that aren't in anyone's brain.

Here's a way to think about it. Imagine human progress as the amplitude of a wave. That wave oscillates forward through time by being passed on from one person to the next. Each person can add their tiny nudge to the wave when it reaches them, increasing its amplitude a little. Over time, that resonance means the wave grows and grows.

But before language, writing, drawing, etc. every time the wave passed from one human to the next, some of the amplitude was lost. In other words, the wave was damped. It doesn't take much damping for the wave to never grow beyond a certain amplitude.

Each new communication technology increases the efficiency that we can pass knowledge from one person to the next and reduces that damping friction. Even a tiny improvement here compounds exponentially as the wave resonates through time.

Now, with the Internet, we've made it _incredibly_ easy to preserve and share information. I think the next advance for us is going to be dealing with the fact that we've made it equally easy to share things that aren't true or helpful. Worse, many of those unfacts prey on our cognitive biases and are more appealing and frequently shared.

<comment><USER10> It seems that the nudge from each individual can either contribute to the resonance or detract (constructive vs destructive interference).

There are many ways this can unfold. For example, groups of people with similar values, mindsets, or skills can much more easily manifest significant constructive interference.

As you note, the speed/frequency of the wave seems much faster now with our new communication technologies. These changes, along with the increased scale of human population, introduce new patterns for both constructive and destructive interference that we need to understand and handle.

Of course, if we try to solidify the metaphor further... this wave is likely to have enormous dimensionality and be composed of components that would absurdly difficult to even begin measuring. But it's a great metaphor and certainly got me thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the links in the post was also a really great read, for those who skipped it.

"Reality has a surprising amount of detail": [http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a- surprising-...](http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising- amount-of-detail)

<comment><USER11> Also recommend this as a follow-on. I think it's an important point, and also well presented. The anecdotes make it memorable but it's concise where it matters.

After I read this last year it changed the way I interacted and observed things around me for a while. Poking/prodding more, and asking more "what/how" questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like to think that inventions/concepts/idea have a life of their own. They interact, reproduce, mutate. They grow around themselves bubbles of compatible ideas. Sometimes they compete to kill other ideas.

When viewed this way as a complex system, it become more easy to understand their behavior as emergent properties of the system. Systems can come to equilibrium, then won't move anymore. They can also take some time to reach equilibrium, traversing full of saddle-points landscapes. Systems that have reached equilibrium are not interesting anymore as they are not thriving, in the concept ecosystem this is the equivalent of being dead. As long as there are alive, these systems are subjected to Darwinian evolutions, which would explain the tendency for systems which take a long time to converge.

But interesting systems (turing complete) can also exhibit chaotic behavior, and knowing when they will crash can't be predicted (halting problem). Any biologist know that ecosystems are fragile and can be pushed either side of the frontier of chaos.

I also like to think of inventions/concept as numbers, which can be factored, multiplied and added. Sometimes you get a new prime number (or was it there all along :) ).

<comment><USER13> I believe this concept was where the term "meme" came from (coined by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene))

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> About not having invented anything: it's harder to invent something novel today simply because so much has already been invented and knowledge of it is available.

Centuries ago, it was easier to think of things to invent (we should be able to fly, to stay under water longer, to copy books faster, to notate music… ). It still took a lot of work to actually realize the invention (which only could be done by people wealthy enough to dedicate the time or get patronage from a wealthy source).

Today, we've run low on the scope of reasonably easy to invent things that are actually valuable. All the obvious "wish we could X" things have been done or are nigh impossible for any one person or small team to figure out (or flat out impossible). Innovation in areas like AI or medicine or battery tech — that stuff is all being actively worked on and requires massive funding of teams of advanced specialists. We're not going to see some person just invent something around these things the way multiple people independently invented forms of rope in prehistory.

<comment><USER15> This is not the case, the famous (if apocryphal) quote of "everything that can be invented has been invented" made in 1900 by the head of the US patent office was clearly wrong and made either in jest or due to an enormous lack of imagination. The point is that there is always more to invent and the possibilities keep increasing.

There are plenty of inventions yet to make, from complex AI enabled devices down to the simple mundane items that make daily life slightly easier. I founded a company based on the latter that is ticking over nicely.

By saying that it is harder to invent things now shows you have fallen into one of the traps that the author highlights:

> If you have never seen rope, it actually doesn't occur to you that rope > would come in handy, or to ask yourself how to make some.

You have never seen the thing you need to invent so it takes either a leap of inspiration or a concerted effort to sit down and think of something new to solve a problem you have, chances are you will get their iteratively over a long time and not really see what you have made as "an invention".

Ideation isn't some spark that hits you, ideas need to be thought about and created with effort.

<comment><USER16> > _This is not the case, the famous (if apocryphal) quote of "everything that > can be invented has been invented" made in 1900 by the head of the US patent > office was clearly wrong and made either in jest or due to an enormous lack > of imagination. The point is that there is always more to invent and the > possibilities keep increasing._

Just because somebody said something that was wrong 100 years ago, doesn't mean it's also wrong now.

And there is such a thing as "low hanging fruit".

We have absolutely no contract with the universe or nature that guarantees us that there's "always more to invent", even less so that "the possibilities keep increasing".

<comment><USER17> are you calling inventing flight low hanging fruit? I'd bet even after given the answer and reading up on wikipedia, you would struggle building a plain from scratch.

its not harder to invent things, you just dont know how to do it. its not a problem on you, I couldnt invent anything myself. if anything, we are in a golden age, much like people ~1900 were when it comes to invention. the scripting languages, algorithms, computing power at my finger tips gives me incredible power.

sadly, I didnt think of making a crypto currency ~2009. I didnt think of creating a ride sharing service, selfie drones, or fidget spinners. well actually I did create a fidget spinner with my roller blade bearings back in the early 2ks, but I didnt think anything of it.

point is, we take for granted all the stuff that is available to us now, and there are plenty of stuff (even low hanging fruit) to invent, its just very hard.

<comment><USER18> I think a lot of people think of inventions but don't have the motivation or resources to execute - and someone else creates the thing, possibly with roots deep in the past. I remember reading a magazine article (maybe in Popular Science) about the Peltier effect when I was in high school and thinking it could/should be used for cooling CPUs. In practically no time, the Power Macintosh 8100/110 came out, using such a cooler. It may not have been the first, but it was the first I was aware of, and it made me irrationally feel like someone stole my idea. A year or two later, my boss at my first job asked me to create, essentially, eBay. I read some academic articles on computerized auctions and gave it up as too complicated.

One thing that made a great impression on me was reading an old Dr. Dobbs journal (I think from the 70s) in which someone was angrily responding to Bill Gates. Gates had said that hobbyists generally steal their software, and of course that pissed people off. The letter writer said if you want to be paid for your software you should bundle it with hardware. So with hindsight, Gates became a billionaire not because he had a unique idea, but because he recognized the value of something lots of people knew and executed it.

Thinking of things is infinitely easier than sifting through all the noise and then committing 100% to making something specific a reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nothing much (in percentage terms) got invented until the industrial revolution. The question is why the industrial revolution took so long. If you are interested in this topic I highly recommend _A Farewell to Alms_ [0] - warning controversial hypothesis, but it raises lots of interesting topics to think about.

0\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Farewell_to_Alms)

<comment><USER20> What have the Romans ever done for us?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-fRo5-p9hE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-fRo5-p9hE)

[http://peterburk.github.io/pliny/ChaptersHtml/0/1.%20PlinyPe...](http://peterburk.github.io/pliny/ChaptersHtml/0/1.%20PlinyPedia.html)

<comment><USER21> There is a lot of discussion online why the Romans didn't have an industrial revolution. One argument I heard was that they relied too much on slave labor and improvements in productivity weren't really sought after. See for example here

[https://medium.com/@MarkKoyama/could-rome-have-had-an- indust...](https://medium.com/@MarkKoyama/could-rome-have-had-an-industrial- revolution-4126717370a2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> James Dyson always strikes me as a solid modern representation of just how difficult it is to actually invent (or re-invent) something new, very useful and commercially successful. He went through hundreds of variations and major prototypes on the vacuum cleaner over 5+ years. Even after he got a product he could commercialize, it took another 10-15 years to make it really take off. He spent two decades just to get the business to a point of true sustaining success, while fending off a global swath of well funded competitors at every price tier and quality.

<comment><USER23> > difficult [...] competitors

I once saw a video interview with leadership from Hoover, the vacuum _bag_ company. They lamented not accepting a long-ago acquisition offer from Dyson... so they could use his patents to shut down the whole bagless vacuum idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The poverty trap explanation here makes a lot of sense to me, although maybe it needs a bit of expansion.

In a subsistence farming environment it seems true that people did not have much time or resources to devote to making inventions. However, from what I've read of hunter-gatherer tribes still around today, the people living in them actually seem to have quite a bit of free time, yet obviously technological innovation has been quite rare.

So is it the case that innovation happens in a fairly specific set of circumstances, where resources and time are scarce enough to make innovation necessary, but still plentiful enough to allow for innovation?

Or maybe its just that the type of civilization agriculture creates leads to sufficient population densities for knowledge to start accumulating.

<comment><USER25> Doing any sort of work is a constant process of invention, as you solve all the little problems involved. This other post linked from the article is a good read: [http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a- surprising-...](http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising- amount-of-detail)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The post touches on the idea that the number of human beings that exist today far exceeds those in the past. Interesting thought. We are now like a cpu (collectively speaking) with 7 billion cores vs 50,000 years ago would only be about 10-100k in numbers.

<comment><USER27> But only a few million cores are doing worthwhile work.

Most of us aren't contributing to the advancement of knowledge, for example. If we could up our utilization with more people doing R&D, for instance, we'd accumulate knowledge much faster.

<comment><USER28> A fast search algorithm is to have 1000 threads check all 1000 array elements at the same time. Possibly only one thread will find the value you're looking for, but it's not like the other 999 threads were wasting their time.

<comment><USER27> Sure, 1000 people working on a difficult problem, and only one person solves it. Good analogy.

What problem are we trying to solve? Curing cancer? AI? Compiler research?

Most humans are not working on the important stuff. If we could increase that by even a few percentage points, humanity would benefit.

<comment><USER28> > What problem are we trying to solve?

Cheaper clean energy. Cures for diseases. Social stability.

In some cases, we aren't talking about 1000 people. It could be 1000 cities or 1000 countries or 1000 bills of rights.

<comment><USER27> I'm personally not working on any of those problems.

I think you're completely missing my point. 7 billion people on the planet. Most of are not working on research, ..., the important stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Perhaps this is covered by the "crude hacks" category, but I'm reminded of the story of how the wheel was lost in Arabia. Technology doesn't necessarily provide a marginal improvement.

[http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197303/why.they.lost.th...](http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197303/why.they.lost.the.wheel.htm)

</comment><comment><USER30> If nothing else, this article's example of inventing rope caused me to seek to learn how to make it, which I now know how to do.

<comment><USER31> "Learning how to make rope" != "Watching a 10 min YouTube video"

<comment><USER30> Sure, but were I to find myself stranded in the wilderness, my odds of successfully creating rope are many times higher than before I spent those few minutes. I think that's pretty amazing, especially from the perspective this article is trying to convey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The inventions we care about today are only useful to a certain sort of society, and it took a long time for that to emerge.

Imagine you're in a jungle with your tribe. You basically have plants, animals and rocks with which to make stuff. You live marginally, and people sometimes die from starvation. Your tribe migrates, meaning you have to carry everything you need with you.

If you happened to figure out some metal working, it's probably not worth doing. Your tribe can't set up a mine, and gathering fuel is a huge effort.

Realistically, that sort of thing probably needs an agricultural society that can afford to feed people who aren't farmers.

</comment><comment><USER33> The list is missing what IMHO is the most important reason: it took a really, really long time to transform wild plants and animals into useful domesticated varieties.

Bringing home some grains of that wild wheat that grows just a tiny bit larger. Befriending a wolf that is a little less distrustful of you. Picking that apple with the slightly smaller seeds. And so on.

Without those, you really are better off remaining a hunter-gatherer. People became significantly shorter when they first adopted a sedentary lifestyle.

<comment> racer-v _it took a really, really long time to transform wild plants and animals into useful domesticated varieties._

Really? The wild plants and animals were already useful. So from day one, the transitional forms to the domestic varieties were useful as well.

 _Without those, you really are better off remaining a hunter-gatherer._

There's not a sharp division between hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist. Sedentism preceded agriculture. As people accidentally dropped seeds around their dwellings (or discarded them with the trash), they gradually became gardeners and then farmers.

<comment><USER34> You can consider wheat. Originally the number of seeds produced by a wheat stalk was small. Which meant needing to sow a high proportion of your crop for next year. With domestication the yields slowly increased over several thousand years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is also why true AI would advance very rapidly: no biology or society to stand in the way, few constraints re: self-upkeep, unlimited ability to record/analyze, ability to simulate variations of combining A&B, even when A or B seem useless in isolation...

<comment><USER36> True AI as in a true artificial thinking being? Or true AI as effectively a god?

All comments like this assume the AI is absolutely goal oriented toward self- improvement and self-propagation and has no limitations or competition. "No biology or society" \- what about the physical hardware and infrastructure needed to maintain it? "Self upkeep" \- so its directly connected to an entire automated vertically integrated supply chain and factory complex? "Unlimited ability to record/analyze" \- again, where is it getting this infinite storage and processing capacity? "ability to simulate variations of..." \- if it's truly intelligent in a way humans would consider intelligent, even massively moreso, why would it spend all its time random walking the solution space of everything?

If we are talking about AI as god, that can work, I suppose, but as someone who really likes transhumanism and the idea of AI in general, this idea of the sloughing away of all limitations and an AI actor totally dedicated with either the infinite and immediate improvement or replacement of itself makes no sense to me.

Am I missing something here, or is there just to much engineer whispering in the corners of my brain.

<comment><USER37> > an AI actor totally dedicated with either the infinite and immediate > improvement or replacement of itself makes no sense to me.

If I decide that a problem is so hard that the best solution is to invent a superhuman AI to solve it, then this is an approach that human-level intelligence can come up with, so a superhuman intelligence can too.

Self-improvement and self-replacement are probably not an AI's actual goal, they're just things that are useful to most potential goals that an AI can have. (And they're easier for the potential AI because the prerequisite research has already been done at that point.)

(If you knew I was trying to either cure cancer or colonize mars, you could predict that I'll start raising money, even though those goals don't have much in common.)

<comment><USER38> > If I decide that a problem is so hard that the best solution is to invent a > superhuman AI to solve it, then this is an approach that human-level > intelligence can come up with, so a superhuman intelligence can too.

It can _try_ , but it doesn't mean that it would success at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There is an old adage about necessity being the mother of invention.

Invention takes place every day in oh so many peoples lives all around the world. However, too many of those same people don't see what they are doing as being inventive. Hence, they quite often do not share their inventions and ideas with others as they don't think that those inventions and ideas are good enough.

If you watch little children, you see invention occurring all the time. It is only when we are adults that we lose the concept that invention is everywhere.

The natural world around us is an incredible source of ideas and usable inventions. As James Tour has put it, we can learn so much advanced technological manufacturing processes from studying the internal workings of biological cells, let alone all the other processes that occur between cells and in the various organs in different species.

The fact of the matter with technological advancement is that we advance despite all of our efforts. In every field in which we humans work, the status quo is the important thing and so we take great efforts to slow change to a crawl for all sorts of reasons. Change occurs and those who have driven the next set of changes then drive the next status quo to stop change.

</comment><comment><USER40> You can combine many of these...

Several early inventions were incredibly time consuming to make by hand, and judging from apes, social groups didn't have a concept of specialization, but all sat around making and teaching the same thing at the same time, partially as a form of bonding. So, say, sharpening rocks improved consistent access to food, but lowered free time required to experiment or make other inventions, and doing the latter would exclude you from the social bonding of making the one tool, which risks making you an other the group resents. Lack of storage, even on clothing, meant everything after your first tool was disposable. Keeping things more than a day might have been an unnatural concept too, so already expensive production costs are multiplied by uses.

There was a long term observational study of chimps where a subgroup of them started spontaneously team hunting, chasing prey towards the others, like a set sports play. They did it effectively for a few seasons, then just stopped... Group dynamics changed and some left the tribe, others had mates, priorities just changed. Maybe retaining knowledge is really hard before you're organized around shared knowledge as a principle.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is one of the primary takeaways I got from reading Sapiens. Our big brains didn't pay off for millenia, until they did, and in a big way. Most times, innovation isn't enough to beat the competition...you have to survive long enough for it to give you an edge.

<comment><USER42> > Our big brains didn't pay off for millenia, until they did, and in a big > way.

That's not how evolution works. Each step along the way must produce a net benefit or it gets discarded. Just as insect wings served as propulsion for water skimming before actual flight, big brains paid off, then got bigger and paid off some more, etc. The only hiccup is the benefit has to outweigh the cost (eg big brains need more calories).

Side note: I think our wide array of modern mental disorders are costs of our brains' continuing enlargement. I.e. brains are trying to figure out how to get even bigger and more powerful _without_ also having OCD or schizophrenia.

<comment> racer-v _Each step along the way must produce a net benefit or it gets discarded._

Maybe so, but the benefit could have just been individual fitness signalling (like a peacock's tail) without providing any advantage to the species as a whole until the big "payday".

<comment><USER43> A peacock's tail can be seen; how do you propose the other sex fell in love with the brainier homo sapiens? It's a lot more likely that intelligence provided a net benefit.

<comment> racer-v "That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man,

If with his tongue he cannot win a woman."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well, at the dawn of human civilization our finest tools were hewn rock. Now we have computers and have stood on the moon.

It took a long time because we started with nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I like the article but I think it's missing the forest for the trees. The reason why things took so long relative to current rates of progress is just because knowledge compounds upon itself.

Early on in a system defined by compound growth you will have slow growth. Then eventually exponential growth. This is what we've experienced.

</comment><comment><USER45> Having run a few areas / programs that delivered a decent amount of innovation in the underlying process, I've been surprised with just how much isn't obvious...

My general expectations:

\- First six months of full time focus on a work process is basically just learning your way around; goal is to get a real process map (actual activity) and proper data source \- By the end of that period, I usually have a hypothesis about the way things ought to be \- Months 6 - 18: get knuckleheads to test hypothesis \- Years 2 - 3: Use results of tests to identify the metrics we actually should have been tracking and build appropriate data sources. Test new sets of hypothesis which work out brilliantly, usually from stuff we thought didn't matter.

Incidently... this is likely why most MBA strategy firms are full of shit... they usually exit the project within six months, which as you see... isn't anywhere near enough.

</comment><comment><USER46> Great read, however, I think there is something else in play here.

With regards to what we consider inventions that move us forward (more advanced or fundamentally more novel solutions) I wonder if the problem isn't just a lack of imagination but imagination and abilities compared to what technology can deliver.

I always think of this as a reminder that perhaps it's possible to imagine things that humans can't imagine.

[https://twitter.com/Hello_World/status/861735184990961664](https://twitter.com/Hello_World/status/861735184990961664)

Having said that there is of course a big difference between inventing something fundamentally new (a rope) and improving it (nylon rope).

But more and more I get the feeling that humans aren't really going to invent most of the solutions we can dream up.

</comment><comment><USER43> The article is factually incorrect: Our brains were as modern 50K years ago as they are now.

A major reason is, people are not actually as intelligent or creative as one assumes. We are bad at unsupervised learning. A lot of our learning, when you look more closely, is supervised learning.

<comment> racer-v _People's brains were actually biologically less functional fifty thousand years ago._

This is correct; there's been a huge amount of brain evolution in the past 50K years. See for example "The 10,000 Year Explosion" (Cochran).

<comment><USER43> Cochran's popular science book has no scientific backing or support from working scientists and peer reviewed articles. In particular, human genomics can easily refute the idea of brain functional changes in the last 10K years. Our ancestral populations that colonized EurAsia, Africa, and the Americas diverged before the 10,000 mark, and there are no discernible cognitive differences between any of these groups.

Furthermore, this is why Cochran is considered a racist; correctly so.

<comment> racer-v Could you provide a reference as to how "human genomics can easily refute the idea of brain functional changes in the last 10K years"?

 _Furthermore, this is why Cochran is considered a racist; correctly so._

I'd caution that this isn't actually an argument, but merely invective: [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Hmm, none of these sound right. I think the issue was mostly that as a hunter gatherer, if you make something, you have to carry it. So you couldn't accumulate a lot of tools, not to mention stuff like forges and so forth.

</comment><comment><USER48> I occasionally think about certain foods (e.g. diary things such as meringue - or bread - or alcohol etc.), and think, "how the hell did someone come across this". I guess the answer is simply: time!

</comment><comment><USER49> There are tons of new inventions happening every day. People do new things only for themselves. What is impeded is bringing these to mass market due to markets being concentrated in few hands.

<comment><USER25> Not to mention the huge amount of work it takes to communicate ideas clearly and get people to pay attention to them. Making money from an idea gets people to pay attention, but that only works for some inventions -- lots of great ideas will never turn an immediate profit.

</comment></comment><comment> racer-v A favorite from Jack Handy: "I think somebody should come up with a way to breed a very large shrimp. That way, you could ride him, then after you camped at night, you could eat him. How about it, science?"

While today saying "how about it, science?" has become our second nature, it wasn't the obvious way to think about the world 50K years ago.

</comment><comment><USER50> > Often A isn't useful without B, and B isn't useful without A. For instance, > A is chariots and B is roads.

Even without chariots, road are useful: pack animals and people on foot will move much more easily if there is a solid path that doesn't turn to mud when it's raining, that's clear of obstacles and relatively smooth.

<comment><USER51> It was a contrived example but charitably there are lots of inventions that are only useful in light of other inventions.

<comment><USER50> Yes, I was just criticizing the example chosen, not the explanation itself (and judging from the votes, I was unclear).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Ten years of blockchain technology and the only popular use case is cryptocurrency.

It would seem that current times bring innovation in ridiculous pace, but the fact is - it's still awfuly slow.

</comment><comment><USER53> Harder to mass market, hire and develop tools without television, internet and also the dependency on other things not yet invented, freeing up of capital and access to credit

</comment><comment><USER54> There's also the minor point that up until around 12,000 years ago a lot of prime land was under ice, and resources were rather less accessible than they are today.

</comment><comment><USER55> Hindsight gave us so much metaknowledge. It's true that if i never saw a rope i might lose faith quickly if trying to craft the idea from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think this post is missing a big one: entropy

<comment><USER57> Elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The invention that took a long time to come up with was agriculture. That was the killer invention.

</comment><comment><USER59> > _'Crude hacks' get you most of the way there, reducing the value of great > inventions._

</comment><comment><USER60> This whole thread is hilarious. Well done.

<comment><USER61> Holy crap I agree. I mean I know it's not polite to point and laugh but this thread is nuts. How do people write and upvote some of the opinions in this thread? It's like they have zero sense of irony or introspection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond has a lot to say on this topic.

</comment><comment><USER63> No word on patents as a technology driver?

<comment><USER39> If you look at the history of patents, I think you might be surprised at just how little patents drive technology forward. I think you will find many, many examples of technology moving forward after patents expire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> It's basically an exponential curve.

</comment><comment><USER65> AI currently evolve under a human environment. Its success to next gen all based on human selection even if it is self breeding ( the guy just lost funding whilst it ...)

Hence we are still in AI-human coevolve stage. When some AI leaks to internet and survive there as Like bots and evolve (not necessarily self aware) it would be a different. When it start to find a way to get enemy and declare independence it would be even more different.

Alphago takes years to do CO-human-game-player-evolution but 3 days for go and a couple of hours for chess. May be it could be shorter than we thought.

The Egyptian Slave will go to the promise land leaving their master behind.</comment>


A cross-platform, scriptable speech recognizer. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arianvp/RecoVim

<comment><USER2> Awesome code, a very well thought out idea.</comment>


Tool to help migrate application code from Oracle to PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/societe-generale/code2pg <comment><USER2> Hi, author here. If you wish to discuss the tool further, do not hesitate!</comment>


Hacking this weekend? Join us on Freenode: ##holiday-hackoff - <AUTHOR>

Working on something? Feel free to idle with us. <comment><USER2> Can't find the channel. :) Is it empty?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's ##holiday-hackoff on Freenode -- there's about 10 of us or so. Two pounds</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you decide if another person would be a good co-founder? - <AUTHOR>

A serious question for hackers or would-be hackers. I think the most serious barrier to many start-ups ever getting started up is the would-be founder who knows better than to go solo, but who isn't sure how to find a suitable co-founder. What do you suggest for finding a co-founder? <comment><USER2> I talked to an old guy that ran a large trucking company some years back, and based on his own experience he gave me the following advice: Never start a business with people that have the same qualifications and interests as yourself. He had once started an unsuccessful trucking company with three other trucking people. The result was that they had amazing trucks that were always in perfect shape, but sales, marketing, finance, and all sorts of other things didn't get done. And they failed. His current company was started with an accountant. So try to find a partner that finds the stuff you're uninterested in interesting.

That said, finding a co-founder is hard - you don't know whether it'll work out before you'e tried it. So the best advice is probably to test each other out, maybe by doing a small project first, and seeing how it goes. Additionally you should have a written agrement on what happens if it doesn't work out.

And most important of all: Don't take it personally.

<comment><AUTHOR> _So try to find a partner that finds the stuff you're uninterested in interesting._

Thanks for the concrete advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Track record. What have they produced in the past? Do they tend to complete things they've worked, or die 90% of the way to the finish line (a really bad thing)?

Have they had any fallouts/meltdowns? There will _always_ be a "good reason" it happened. No one will say "Yeah, I was a prick, and a drag, and a pessimist, and the company/project/whatever collapsed largely because of me." Also beware the, "I was immature back then, but I've recognized what I did wrong, and I've improved." No they haven't. At least, not if their last gig was a failing.

Past a certain age, the vast majority of people pretty much don't change very much at all, ever. And if they had changed, they'd have accomplished something they could show you. So look at track record - it doesn't lie.

Beyond that, there's plenty of good advice and Paul Graham's written on this plenty. A very big one for me - do they read books? Yes, books, not blogs/social news/newspaper/magazines. Avid reader of books is always a huge plus. Knowledge and lessons from books are repeated into you many times over a few days to a couple months as you read, so it sticks more permanently than reading a smorgasbord of unrelated things.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Do they tend to complete things they've worked, or die 90% of the way to the finish line (a really bad thing)?_

That does seem to be the most crucial criterion. Thanks for your thoughts about track record.

 _A very big one for me - do they read books? Yes, books, not blogs/social news/newspaper/magazines._

This criterion makes a lot of sense to me too. I'd better end this HN session and go read some more of my latest book.</comment></comment>


Our YC Interview: A Scottish Startup's Perspective - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shopforcloud.com/2012/06/our-yc-interview-scottish-startups.html?spref=tw

<comment><USER2> Before I moved to silicon valley, I used to come here a couple of times a year, visiting as a Scottish person living in London. I would deliberately schedule any important meetings at the end of the trip, knowing full well that it would take me a while to get into the valley mindset and start thinking bigger. Unfortunately there is a pessimistic and sceptical mindset in Scotland which is extremely unhelpful.

By the way, if you'd just inflated your numbers that wouldn't have worked either; you need to believe them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing. This is helpful.</comment>


Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/sweet-sanity-75-of-americans-say-infringement-fines-should-be-under-100.ars <comment><USER2> Even better than the statistic quoted in the title, 48% of Americans don't believe any fine or other punishment should exist at all. The quoted statistic actually refers to 75% of the remaining 52%.

<comment><USER3> Is in US possible a referendum on this matter?

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately the US federal government does not have a mechanism for a referendum. Some states do, but this would be a federal matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Err, I wonder what percent of people think parking tickets should be under $5. Not sure that means it's a good policy.

<comment><USER6> Depends on the infraction. Overrun a meter? just pay the difference. Double parking on a one-lane or major artery? Hang them by the big toe.

<comment><USER7> You don't seem to understand that as long as enforcement isn't 100%, the cost of punishment _must_ exceed the cost of compliance if it's going to deter violation.

If the only cost of overrunning a meter were paying the amount of the overrun, any economically rational actor would simply _never pay meters_. If he doesn't get caught, he's parked for free; if he does get caught, he pays only what he otherwise would have.

The civil penalty for laws like unpaid parking meters and illegal downloading of copyright works should be slightly greater than the original cost times the inverse enforcement rate. If we catch 1% of parking meter cheaters, they should pay at least a hundred times their overrun to ensure that it's economically rational to pay meters. Since we need only deter _humans_ , not "economically rational actors", we can take risk aversion and incomplete knowledge into account and probably decrease that fine somewhat.

The same principle that applies to parking meters applies to copyright infringement.

<comment><USER8> The "economically rational actor" thing has been debunked long ago (see Kahneman and Tversky). There are much better ways to get people to behave the way you want then appealing to their statistical skills.

<comment><USER5> I assure you that if it's cheaper to pay parking tickets than to feed meters, people will stop feeding meters.

Hey look, it actually happened in Mumbai: [http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/03/26/how-to-cheat-the- mumb...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/03/26/how-to-cheat-the-mumbai-train- system/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a real democracy the majority would actually make the laws. A fine of $100 sounds fair, it is still a punishment and would be much more acceptable to police heavily (and with less lawyers involved). I would be fine with automated fines of $100 being handed out to people downloading a file illegally and I think that would be a more effective deterrent than the present lawsuit madness that rules copyright.

<comment><USER10> IMO one should never be okay with automated fines of any kind, especially on the Internet. There is far too much potential for false positives, and too much difficulty identifying when a particular download is illegal.

Not to mention, there would be a very strong incentive for the hosts of pirated material to find ways of bypassing the fines and blocking their crawlers. Griefers will install malware on others' computers that downloads illegal songs just to incur $100 fines.

<comment><USER9> Think of a system that works much the same way as speed cameras work in some countries. You deter the majority of people from speeding in a particular area. You automate an amnesty into the system for certain types of vehicles (emergency services, military, diplomatic) but instead put a protection on publicly owned computers, libraries, schools and charities (which, IMO, should not have to pay for copyrighted works anyway and it is already too much effort to enforce). Create an independent arbiter to handle false-positives and exceptional circumstances without any direct connection to financial interests (a government, funded by the fines or industry funded). Send the remaining money to the copyright holder.

There is the same incentive now for blocking MediaSentry and the like, why would the change escalate this? Griefers already do this too but usually with material far more illegal than music.

The present system doesn't make sense. It should not be OK for a company to bankrupt someone over something that can be legally purchased for a minimal amount. Both enforcement and defence against enforcement are too expensive, time-consuming and economically pointless. Having an efficient system is better than having an inefficient system.

<comment><USER10> _You automate an amnesty into the system for certain types of vehicles (emergency services, military, diplomatic) but instead put a protection on publicly owned computers, libraries, schools and charities (which, IMO, should not have to pay for copyrighted works anyway and it is already too much effort to enforce)._

Simple workaround: set up an automated, anonymous service that pays all college students to run Tor endpoints in their dorms and libraries. Or, set up a charity that provides free Internet access to the poor, and use its spare bandwidth.

 _Create an independent arbiter to handle false-positives and exceptional circumstances without any direct connection to financial interests (a government, funded by the fines or industry funded)._

You're talking about creating a huge bureaucracy with this system. That's not the kind of make-work job creation we need. Besides, we already have independent arbiters in the courts.

 _Having an efficient system is better than having an inefficient system._

Having an efficient system with false positives is far worse than an inefficient system with false negatives. I'm opposed to speed cameras for the same reason I'm opposed to automated punishment or automated surveillance of any kind: enforcement of laws should be person vs. person, as a matter of principle. Without the direct human connection, it is too easy for those with the power of enforcement to go significantly overboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surveying people on what fines anything should be is ridiculous.

I once made the mistake of surveying people what software product prices should be. Surprise surprise the average was about $15, which I suspect was just as much as they could say without actually asking for free.

<comment> guard-of-terra And guess what? Apple proved that cheap and abundant software is really the way to go.

People were right but the industry took a while to catch up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While that is just plain common sense, there are still problems. If the fine is no great hardship and your chance of getting caught is less than 1%, it's rational to always infringe rather than pay. Raising the rate of enforcement would be hard since $100 doesn't cover the court costs and thus the industry would be losing money on every case — even ones they win.

<comment><USER13> As we know, however, people simply aren't the rational economic agents that the economic giants of yore held them to be. Most people would be happy to pay if the legitimate product was better and more convenient than the pirated version. It isn't.

See Gabe Newell's take on piracy. Valve's certainly done well in that respect.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk> (piracy bit @1:05, whole interview is worth watching)

[http://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue- service-n...](http://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not- price/)

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure I get your point. If someone finds the legitimate product is not better or more convenient than the pirated product, isn't the rational choice to go for the pirated one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Only 52 precent of American adults support punishment at all_

It seems the real story is that _48 percent support no penalty at all._ Why the misleading (and inaccurate) headline?

<comment><USER15> Because no penalty is functionally the same as a $0 fine, which is well under $100. (if there are _nth-time_ offender bumps to the fine price, then they become different, but that is not studied here).

<comment><USER16> No penalty implies a moral / ethical stance that is different from even a $1 penalty.

The underlying argument being that the majority of the population finds the current laws to be unjust not in measure, but on principle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In other news, bank robbers say bank robberies should be punished by fines under $100.

<comment><USER18> First, it does indicate a problem with the copyright system when such a large number of people (+50%, per Free Culture) are 'felons' under US law and liable for hundreds of thousands in damages.

Second, wouldn't it be reasonable for the bank robbers to request that they're not sentenced to death for robbing banks? Can't they argue the punishment doesn't match the crime?

<comment><USER19> _First, it does indicate a problem with the copyright system when such a large number of people (+50%, per Free Culture) are 'felons' under US law and liable for hundreds of thousands in damages._

While I agree with your conclusions, the logic here is flawed. If everyone started shoplifting, for example, it wouldn't indicate a problem with the laws that people are now criminals.

(Sidenote: Only a small number of people are felons on account of copyright. Under US law, to be a felon you have to have been convicted of a felony.)

<comment><USER20> Copyright infringement is not shoplifting.

<comment><USER19> Goddammit, I knew someone was going to trot that line out.

You see, I never said copyright infringement was shoplifting, or related to shoplifting, in any way. Just because someone uses the words "copyright" and "shoplifting" in the same post doesn't mean that they are saying copyright infringement is shoplifting.

In my above post shoplifting was only an example. My post makes just as much as sense if I replace shoplifting with murder and copyright infringement with cannabis possession. Or shoplifting with arson and copyright infringement with being left handed.

The underlying logic I quoted is what was wrong, not the categorisation, so stop jerking your knee.

<comment><USER21> Your argument demands an obviously _immoral crime_ in order to work. You used shoplifting because everyone agrees that is immoral. You are begging the question.

If you replaced _shoplifting_ with _cannabis possession_ then the line "If everyone started smoking pot, for example, it wouldn't indicate a problem with the laws that people are now criminals" isn't nearly true. In fact, you could argue that alcohol is legal, while cannabis is not, is entirely because everyone does it.

<comment><USER19> I disagree, for a number of reasons.

1\. I don't agree with the statement "shoplifting is necessarily immoral" so it makes no sense for my own argument to hinge on such a fact. 2\. My argument does not only work for an immoral crime; it is merely illustrated by an example of a law people think is not wrong. Shoplifting is merely a counterexample to the logic "If X is a law that a lot of people break then X is a bad law". I do not take this on to conclude that X is not a bad law which would be begging the question. 3\. The original logic was begging the question, not I. The statement "If X is a law that a lot of people break then X is a bad law" only holds if X is already a priori a bad law (and, even then, it requires a few more statements to actually work).

<comment><USER21> > Shoplifting is merely a counterexample to the logic "If X is a law that a > lot of people break then X is a bad law"

Perhaps if 90% of the population shoplifted, then any law against shoplifting would be bad. What is missing from the question is why the majority of the population would shoplift.

<comment><USER19> That is a very valid line of reasoning and one that I would implore everyone to explore in such a situation. But, as you said, "perhaps". It does not directly follow that it is necessarily a bad law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh come on, where are there so many copyright apologists here? Even if you're a capitalist the concept of intellectual property doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER23> Don't be blinded by the abuse of copyright by megacorps. The idea that if someone works hard on something, they ought to have some commercial control over it is sound. Imagine you wrote a 1000-page novel. Isn't it reasonable for the government to grant you exclusive publishing rights for 14 years? It certainly seems like a sensible incentive for you as a creator. It's hard to make the case that you deserve nothing simply because copying bits is easy.

<comment><USER24> Most people who write novels never make any money of them, because they never get published.

Most of the ones that do, makes a pittance.

The percentage of authors that actually makes a living publishing novels is vanishingly small.

If the possibility of making lots of money writing novels is a big incentive for you, presumably you're the type of person who also think they have a good shot at making it big in Vegas.

I'm not necessarily dead set against copyright, but _if_ these people are largely incentivized by money, then society could solve _that_ issue far cheaper and with far fewer restrictions than what copyright provides for, and still pay these people more money than they get today, by creating grants awarded based on some measure of popularity.

<comment><USER25> Even if a novel is unlikely to have great commercial value, I see a great benefit to short term copyright that provides meaningful but limited control over the work to the creator. It's difficult to know what will be valuable in advance.

Now, the current copyright of "life of the author plus seventy years, and oh, wait, is that expiring? on second thought, let's go ahead and add another fifty years unless we decide to go ahead and tack on another fifty years at some point in the future"... that is utterly unjustifiable.

But keep in mind, even the EFF put out a comic satirizing both extremes IP protection ("information, like, _wants_ to be free").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Let's figure out what the fine should be with math! :D

      (10+0)/2*0.32 + (100+11)/2*0.43 + (1000+101)/2*0.14 + (5000 + 1001)/2 * 0.03 + (100000+5001)/2*0.01 + (250000+100001)/2*0.01
      = $2467.56

<comment><USER27> You're not properly representing the large fraction of people who think the fine should be zero. It's kind of confusing unless you read it carefully, but 49% of people do not support fines at all. That pie chart you're copying only represents the other 51% of the population.

I mention that not to quibble with your formula, but because people seem to be seeing that chart and missing that part of the explanation.

<comment><USER26> In that case, it would be:

      0.51 * ((10+0)/2*0.32 + (100+11)/2*0.43 + (1000+101)/2*0.14 + (5000 + 1001)/2 * 0.03 + (100000+5001)/2*0.01 + (250000+100001)/2*0.01)
      = $1,258.46

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> personally, i think that anyone caught infringing should pay a fine equal to the cheapest retail price (over say, the past year) of the thing infringed(like for like, if you pirated the hd version of a movie, you have to buy the blu ray or hd dvd version. if you took a cam'ed version, you have to buy a movie ticket), iff they do not already own it.

yeah, there's a whole bunch of issues that would have to be ironed out and yes, there's no proof you would have even bought whatever you infringed on in the first place, but i feel like its a much saner starting point than what we have now.

<comment><USER29> I must be misunderstanding your proposal, because on the face of it that seems to be so colossally ridiculous that I can't believe it is what you intended. Did you misstate your proposal?

There would be virtually no disincentive to infringement under that proposal. Why not just propose eliminating copyright?

<comment><USER28> The disincentive is having to pay for the thing you pirated. Not to mention attorney fees if you decide to fight the charge.

<comment><USER29> Case 1: you decide not to pirate. You pay retail price.

Case 2: you decide to pirate. You pay 0 with above a 99% chance. If you do get caught, you can pay the minimal retail price over the last year.

What exactly do you see as a disincentive for choosing #2, since case 2 beats case 1 in all cases?

<comment><USER30> Not that I agree with his proposal, but youre assuming that someone wouldn't pirate something that they weren't willing to pay money for. That almost certainly isn't true for a significant population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here's a place where tort reform could be applied sanely.

</comment><comment><USER32> Those darn social science majors and their worthless degrees. If only they would get real jobs! [http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-copy-culture-survey- infringement-...](http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-copy-culture-survey-infringement- and-enforcement-in-the-us/)

<comment><USER33> ?

<comment><USER32> I am lampooning a widespread bias that exists on HN against 'soft' sciences.

<comment><USER34> bias implies people are unfairly disparaging the soft sciences. most of what I see seems pretty fair.

<comment><USER23> maybe you're biased?

<comment><USER34> I think you're just saying I'm biased because you're biased against people who disagree with your biases.

<comment><USER23> hey, it was just a question.

<comment><USER34> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is a good data viz / dashboard platform? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to build a "dash board" site that will post key metrics for OpenStreetMap -- inspired by Wikipedia reports. http://stats.wikipedia.org/
In theory, I could have a cron job that pulls in the data regularly, processes it, updates data files that feed into javascript libraries that then do the visualization.
Thing is, I would rather do as little of this tool chain as possible. Any platforms out there that will help me visualize my data so that I can embed the charts on my website to make a nice dashboard? I'm happy to do some bare minimum pre-processing and feed the API regularly, but would rather not have to get my hands dirty with the front end javascript, since that is not my forte. <comment><USER3> There are tons - both open source and hosted.

\- Tableau isn't free but its very easy and popular in businesses these days

\- Freeboard - open source [http://freeboard.io/](http://freeboard.io/)

\- Geckoboard - <USER2> [https://www.geckoboard.com/](https://www.geckoboard.com/)

\- Dashing - open source [http://shopify.github.io/dashing/](http://shopify.github.io/dashing/)

\- [http://www.datamation.com/open-source/50-open-source- replace...](http://www.datamation.com/open-source/50-open-source-replacements- for-proprietary-business-intelligence-software-1.html) \- 50 Open Source Replacements for Proprietary Business Intelligence Software (many likely have web interfaces)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you, this is great!</comment></comment>


Re: OpenBSD MIPS32 Support - <AUTHOR> http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/16/mmcconv1/others/miod-mips32.txt <comment><USER2> I'm the student that contacted Miod and the one hosting these emails.

No one has questioned this, but I got Miod's permission before sharing.

I think his stance is reasonable. About a year ago, he converted the mips port to mips64 (lower case to denote the actual port names), removing MIPS32 support. If there were reasonably strong developer backing for a mips32 port, I bet it would happen. Obviously, a single curious undergrad doesn't qualify. Here's a great set of slides about this:

[http://www.openbsd.org/papers/ven05-niallo- uwe/slides.pdf](http://www.openbsd.org/papers/ven05-niallo-uwe/slides.pdf)

In regards to the Chromebook comment: there are MIPS Chromebooks in the pipeline. I remember digging through the relevant Linux commits looking for indicators of whether they'd be 32-bit or 64-bit, but I don't remember what I found.

See this email and the associated thread for more information:

[https://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=144012041817764&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd- misc&m=144012041817764&w=2)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, to be fair, he's right. 32-bit is only interesting in the embedded space. If you're running a "real" operating system, there is almost zero cost to running a 64-bit processor instead nowadays.

I'd go further than him, though. OpenBSD has limited resources. Those resources are better deployed on security enhancements which filter out to other operating systems that support less common architectures.

<comment><USER4> "Embedded" is too vague to use for this. Tons of STB's have SOC's with MIPS cores and Linux kernels (and uclibc). The cost could be the cost of the transistors used up by the CPU cores that could go to valuable functions like codec support. The cost could be RAM interface circuitry. The cost could be a dozen things and Linux is adopted in this category of system. It's almost like OpenBSD is defining itself as too good for use in economical, workaday products. I'm sure that would be a misunderstanding by me.

<comment><USER3> The cost of an SoC is almost insensitive to the size of the CPU core. Only RAM and Flash matter.

I'm not joking, here's an STM32F103VGT6 (Arm Cortex M3--not even an A-series which you normally use to run Linux). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STM32F103VGT6-HD.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:STM32F103VGT6-HD.jpg)

Note that this is a little flash heavy (1MB) but pretty mainstream with RAM (96KB).

The RAM and flash absolutely _DWARF_ the core. You could double the size of the core (32 to 64 bit), and that would still be true.

The writing is on the wall for 32-bit on anything running a "real" operating system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any estimate how much the cost of the TLB management is compared to the cost of cache/memory clogging caused by carrying 64-bit pointers around all the time?

<comment><USER6> It's hard to say and would probably vary significantly depending on the workload. 64-bit pointers could theoretically take twice as much space, whereas TLB management, since the MIPS has a software TLB, is also expensive because the TLB interrupt handler needs to run, which means more icache usage (and also has effects on the instruction pipeline, comparable to any other interrupt.)

<comment><USER5> According to this[1] paper the fact, that you effectively double your data cache with 32bit pointers leads to a performance increase of up to 30% in real world applications. I don't believe the comparatively rare context switches caused by TLB management interrupts cause a speed penalty that high. Hence I still don't understand why people want desperately go to 64bit. Just because some kernel programmers find it too stressful to bother with some minor memory management details?

[1] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050913...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050913005371)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be nice if MIPS produced a nice 64 bit development board.

<comment><USER8> There's always the Loongson devices:

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

They have quite a bit more support in FOSS than Cavium's Octeon processor boards. Which are also cool:

[http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON-III_CN7XXX.html](http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON- III_CN7XXX.html)

CHERI project modifies open-source BERI core on Terasic device:

[https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/)

Note: Barely gets more open and extensible than that outside RISC-V, etc. Those don't run FreeBSD, IIRC.

So, MIPS is far from dead even if MIPS32's limitations sucked. :)

<comment><USER7> The Loongson 3 devices are hard to get, although apparently you can get them from China; the 2f devices are slow and a wierd version of mips, dont recommend.

The easy to obtain cheap Cavium is the erlite-3 but it has the most non standard usb which means you are pretty much stuck with a tiny amount of storage.

Soft cores are a bit slow, although have seen CHERI running and it is cool. (Risc-V runs NetBSD, at least partial port, not FreeBSD yet).

So there is no useful easily obtained dev device for under $200 (although Imagination did seem helpful on twitter on helping get stuff).

<comment><USER9> You can always try to use QEMU for OS development when a dev board is not available. The latest version implements Release 6 for 32- and 64-bit MIPS CPUs.

When it comes to development boards, we are working to expand the Creator family to include more options at the high- and low-end.

For those asking if MIPS is dead, my sincere answer is a loud no. We've had a record quarter in shipments, registered over 800m devices last year using the architecture (which represents a 10% increase YoY, by the way).

Regards, Alex.

<comment><USER7> Ah you were the person on twitter... All three main BSD projects could use hardware - all three support edgerouter lite3 but I think only FreeBSD has more useful hardware. Most of the NetBSD dev is on really old hardware. I am a NetBSD developer, can provide contact (email in profile).

Qemu is pretty annoying for development - it tends to emulate obsolete hardware and it is the drivers that takes time; we already have general architecture support, it is real hardware that is useful. Also qemu is not generally bug for bug compatible and it is slow. It is ok if you are paying someone, but giving away hardware is better to incentivize people who are doing something for free.

<comment><USER9> I'll see what I can do in terms of sending a few boards. Will ping you an email shortly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Speaking of 32-bit systems with small amounts of memory, is OpenBSD being used for / developed for embedded devices, especially IoT? Given IoT devices' security issues and their minimal OS feature needs, it seems like it could be a good fit and a great opportunity for OpenBSD. (But given my minimal understanding of both, I could be way off base.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Why is this on the front page?

<comment><USER12> Well maybe for the entertainment value or the aspect that Theo was not involved in the exchange. But probably the best highlight for me was:

In the year 2015, it is a complete nonsense to produce new 32-bit system designs. It's the new ``640KB of memory will be enough for everybody''.

> Also, would it change your mind if Google starting releasing 32-bit > MIPS > Chromebooks?

Of course not. They can release crap hardware if they want to, this doesn't mean we have to support it.

<comment><USER13> Remember, this is Miod. Ask him why they support VAX still. Or his 68k side projects.

<comment><USER14> 68k is dead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't know why your getting downvoted since OpenBSD killed the 68K port in 5.1.

<comment><USER12> maybe that a statement like "xxx is dead" is perhaps too much in line to the bully joke "bsd is dead" that was prominent from linux jocks many years ago, more mature nowadays and not seen that `joke` in a while myself (though don't read /. much these days either).

Also when the the CPU is still in use today in places, again hardly constructive and with that probably the glibness of the whole statement without qualifiers that found disfavour.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the context of the conversation, it was a true statement about OpenBSD's supported platforms (mvme68k was discontinued in 5.5, mac68k in 5.1). Also, given the parent of the post was being a bit rude to a specific person, its an appropriate response.

Using the old slashdot troll against a BSD person is a new one.

> Also when the the CPU is still in use today in places, again hardly > constructive and with that probably the glibness of the whole statement > without qualifiers that found disfavour.

Its not in use by OpenBSD which is the topic of conversation</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Lock-Free Programming and Concurrency - <AUTHOR> https://appolo85.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/on-lock-free-programming-and-concurrency/

<comment><AUTHOR> A blog article I wrote on this topic a while back.</comment>


Claims that breakfast is a health panacea may be unsupported - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2019/2/1/18206873/breakfast-diet-weight-loss <comment><USER4> In my personal anecdotal experience, skipping breakfast and instead "fasting" from last night's dinner through to lunch has been really effective at weight control. You are starving by 10am for the first few days you do it, but after that you dont even notice you've skipped eating breakfast. Makes you wonder why you even had breakfast in the first place after a while. I believe that skipping breakfast has now been given a grandiose term of "intermittent fasting" or "intermittent energy restriction diet". I still call it skipping breakfast.

I'll still have breakfast at the weekends as its more of a social thing then, but on the usual 9-5 rat race I just skip it and save 10-20 mins of my day usually spent getting/making + eating breakfast. I even skip before a morning workout - so far no problems after many years doing it.

<comment><USER5> Consuming breakfast takes tome so I've skipped for awhile now. When I get hungry I usually drink a cup of tea black. I eat an early lunch around 11.30am so that does me until dinner at 6pm. I find a cycle of predictiveness allows me to keep a regular weight which trends downwards if I don't deviate.

I also avoid snack machines at work by never having loose change. I also avoid 'free food' unless fruit. Keep sugar to a minimum so no soda and no visits to drive through or donut shops. No soda either.

<comment><USER6> "Free" snacks in the office cost us a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nutritional guidelines have very short lives compared to every other field of science. It's such a minefield of contradictions.

Astonished how many pretend a topic so complicated by biology/genetics and routinely proven wrong can be easily broken down into simplistic good/bad buckets (and of course they definitely got it right this time)

Saturated fats and salt are next in line to fall, despite how hard the entrenched old guard of health authorities want to ignore the new evidence.

<comment><USER8> First it was fat, so we got low fat products and the sugar replaced it. Now sugar is the enemy, so low carb high fat (Keto). Next will be protein.

<comment><USER9> Put fat and sugar together and you get very palatable foods (like ice cream). It makes sense that removing either would help control weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I was young and without a daily schedule, I'd typically end up eating two meals a day. Something like brunch and something like dinner.

In adult life, with a typical schedule, I just skip breakfast and have lunch and dinner like everybody else. It's not a problem at all. Getting up and pretty much immediately having something to eat is just a habit. Sometimes I might get a little hungry before it's time for lunch. Then I have a fruit and that's it.

I don't think this is bad for my capacity at work at all. Ive done the breakfast routine as well, so I know what it's like. I always notice that I'm not working at full speed when I for example haven't slept well or if I'm about to come down with a cold, so I think I would be able to tell if skipping breakfast was having an impact.

</comment><comment><USER11> Drinking at least two liters of water per day - <USER3>

Eating an apple a day - <USER3>

Saturated fats causing increased cholesterol, thus leading to heart failure -<USER3>
It seems that almost everything we've been told since childhood to be healthy has no scientific basis whatsoever.

<comment><USER12> Don't confuse unsupported with no scientific basis. The scientific method allows for making hypothesis that are later demonstrated to be false. It can absolutely be the case that the old recommendations were the best we knew at the time from science, and be unsupported today.

<comment> village-idiot No, the saturated fat argument was pure bullshit from day 1. Ansel Keys cherry picked his data and did not do his multivariate analysis correctly. He then went on to bully and threaten anyone who disagreed with him for the rest of his life.

<comment><USER11> we tend to believe that scientists belong to a different breed of humans who do not hold grudges, aren't greedy, biased etc. The reality is completely different, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For anyone considering skipping breakfast but finding themselves too hungry, I would recommend trying it anyway. When I eat breakfast regularly I get hungry at that time of day, but once I've skipped it for a week or two then my body seems to get used to it and I no longer get hungry at that time.

Also, black coffee for me helps suppress my appetite.

<comment><USER14> Hunger is an interesting feeling. The tide sweeps in, hunger emerges like a wave, a call for action on the horizon. It reaches a crescendo, and then collapses, and disappears. At least, that's how my "routine hunger" feels: eat at time A on day 1, and you'll be hungry at time A on day 2.

The thing to remember about hunger as a craving is that it'll always pass if you leave it alone. Have a cup of water and let it go.

(please note: this is only referring to short term hunger sensations. there is a longer term hunger, but it feels different, more subtle but more all- encompassing)

<comment><USER15> > The thing to remember about hunger as a craving is that it'll always pass if > you leave it alone. Have a cup of water and let it go.

Another option is to use a clock instead of gut feeling. I ignore the hunger until the clock tells me it's been 5 hours since my last meal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If breakfast means sugar loaded crap shown on the pictures there, then do yourself a favor and skip it. If your lunch looks similar, skip it too.

<comment><USER16> Eat if you're hungry or your doctor tells you too. And when you eat, eat good food.

I don't understand why people overcomplicate it. The only difference is if you're trying to lose or gain weight, in which case it makes sense to watch _how much_ and _what_ you eat, _when_ is less important. Follow your body's cues, and plan ahead so you have good options when you're hungry.

Personally, my body isn't ready for breakfast for an hour or two after I wake up, but my kids like to eat as soon as they get up, so I get up earlier so my mealtime matches my kids. I get up between 5-6, and my kids get up around 7:30, so breakfast at 8 works for both of us. Before I had kids, I'd wake up later, skip breakfast entirely, and have an early lunch (11 or so).

Afaict, the "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" came from breakfast makers (dairy, cereal, etc), not medical research. Breakfast _can_ be important, if you're hungry in the morning.

<comment><USER17> > Eat if you're hungry or your doctor tells you too. And when you eat, eat > good food.

> I don't understand why people overcomplicate it.

Because it is, in fact, more complicated in practice. For one thing, it can take significant effort to isolate and distinguish hunger that signals need to eat for calories, the sensations produced by habitual expectation of food, cravings due to specific needs but not general caloric needs, and even thirst.

> The only difference is if you're trying to lose or gain weight, in which > case it makes sense to watch how much and what you eat, when is less > important.

When can actually be quite important if you are trying to do anything with law with your day _besides_ losing weight when trying to lose, since managing to maintain a calorie deficit while mitigating the impact of the adverse effects of such a deficit and the associated stress on other activities is nontrivial.

> Follow your body's cues

Your body's cues are setup to promote overeating when that is possible, because humans aren't actually evolved for constant, reliable food surplus but alternation between surplus and insufficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the table with 'breakfast foods'. This is so telling on the difference between diets in cultures and why obesity is such an issue in the US.

With the exception of the joghurt there is not a single food in this table that I or most of my friends in Germany would eat for 'breakfast'.

<comment><USER19> Sadly, a lot of yoghurt nowadays is also loaded with sugar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a surprisingly good article. It addresses "confus[ing] correlation with causation", addresses the "sponsored by Kellogg" problem, and hammers on the bad breakfast issue:

"So if you're going to eat breakfast, seek out foods that give you the vitamins and nutrients you need to stay healthy, like fruits, vegetables, fiber-rich cereals, and eggs. Steer clear of desserts masquerading as breakfast, like high-sugar granola or yogurt."

</comment><comment><USER21> Healthcare Triage made a wonderful video on the topic : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syleh_6Aopw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syleh_6Aopw)

The channel is run by Aaron Caroll : Professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, the Vice Chair for Health Policy and Outcomes Research and the Director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research.

</comment><comment><USER22> Try Mediterranean style breakfast: eggs, feta/greek/turkish cheese, olives, tomatoes, cucumber/green pepper, and any kind of bread.

<comment><USER23> that sounds a lot like my favourite. ! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ensemble averaging has not worked well for me when it comes to dieting. I'm at a point where I've found what works well for me: high protein Mediterranean eat when I'm hungry. I tried skipping breakfast and wound up being skinny-fat. I tried keto and got fat and muscular. You might fit cleanly into a bin, like me, you might not.

<comment><USER25> What is "skinny-fat"? Is it an issue of uncontrolled weight fluctuations?

<comment><USER26> It means your BMI is "normal", but it's normal because you lack muscle to offset having more fat than ideal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Skipping breakfast is my doctor-approved way of keeping my weight in check. I found myself eating a few hours after dinner, so I still have three meals a day, just not at the traditional times. And like others have said here, hunger is almost never a problem. And drinking water is a great way to satisfy the occasional hunger.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm more likely to skip dinner. I'm too much of a morning person to skip breakfast.

</comment><comment><USER29> They only go into the effects on your health regarding weight loss/gain, but I feel like I get a mental boost on mornings when I eat breakfast (either traditional American or Mediterranean style, never sugar cereal or whatever). The days I eat breakfast, I feel more focused. When I skip it, I'm on the express train to A.D.D. Town.

</comment><comment><USER30> Last time I read an article, it was "Death of the Calorie". That article tries to imply that simple counting "calories" doesn't actually measure health's correlation to "diets".

</comment><comment><USER31> should be titled "eating cereal for breakfast" as it's specifically about cereal

other kinds of breakfast (full-English etc) are healthy

<comment><USER32> Yeah I came here to make the same observation, this article is, as most things on HN, very US-centric. Being a european I've mostly eaten granola, porridge, müsli or sandwiches with cheese and meat for breakfast. But I've still always heard that breakfast is an important meal, without any association to cereal.

Just the fact that I'm hungry in the morning when I wake up should be an indicator.

Everyone's mileage may vary.

<comment><USER33> I'm never hungry in the morning. That should be an indicator that I should skip breakfast, which I often do.

<comment><USER34> I always thought the focus on breakfast came from our peasant roots. My ancestors were field workers and eating a huge breakfast + lunch made sense from an energy input standpoint.

<comment><USER35> That's another factor that this summary (and possibly the cited research) ignores. What do you _do_ before lunch? The two people in the video appear to be knowledge workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The articles title is:

 _Eating breakfast is not a good weight loss strategy, scientists confirm_

And then goes on to say:

 _if you've been eating breakfast to stave off weight gain_

Did I miss something?

<comment><USER33> And this is inconsistent how?

Same quote, more context:

> if you've been eating breakfast to stave off weight gain, researchers are > increasingly learning that breakfast might have the opposite of the desired > effect — it can promote more calorie consumption and weight gain.

<comment><USER36> Eating isn't a weight loss strategy.

In other news, circles are round. Film at 11.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My 1 person study concludes that breakfast cereal tastes terrible. I'd much rather have yogurt or eggs for breakfast.

</comment><comment><USER37> Absolutely painfull. And completely USA-centric. Not a reference to the rest of us. Reminded me of a USian article that was making the rounds a while ago. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/08/magazine/eate...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/08/magazine/eaters- all-over.html)</comment>