The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher - <AUTHOR> http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html <comment><AUTHOR> Anyone who likes this essay would probably enjoy Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education. It's about the historical forces that shaped the evolution of compulsory schooling it America and in other industrialized countries. The book makes some pretty bold claims. For example, "Ninety-six and a half percent of the American population is mediocre to illiterate where deciphering print is concerned."

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3j.htm>

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/3b.htm>

An annoying quirk of Gatto is that he usually doesn't cite his sources formally because he thinks making the reader peruse the entire primary text to fact check him encourages intellectual curiosity and independent thinking. That being said, many of the excerpts he uses are now in public domain and take about 30 seconds to Google. (For example Gatto is using the 1993 National Adult Literacy Survey to make the above claims, which you can download as a PDF from the National Center of Education Statistics.)

Anyway the whole book can be found here:

<http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm>

<comment><USER2> Another good one is John Holt's How Children Learn, in which he says something along the lines of "It's just as well that we don't try to teach children to walk and talk" or else they would struggle to learn that as well.

My wife and I are homeschooling our children for sure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My 6 year old neighbor keeps getting in trouble for asking questions in school. His dad asked the teacher, "aren't you supposed to ask questions?" The teacher's response: "I don't like being questioned."

<comment><USER4> What a terrible thing to have happened. I hope your neighbor can switch classes or at least schools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It occurred to me some time ago that many things are confusing because they are improperly named. For example, the label "Education System" is confusing because it implies that the system in question is primarily about education. Having accepted the premise, you now have many paradoxes to explain.

But if you change the label to, say, "Child Processing Factories", most of the paradoxes disappear.

Edit: I originally wrote "child processing system". But I prefer the stronger formulation.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a book called The Addictive Organization that touches on this. Below are a couple thoughts and excerpts cut-and-pasted from my notes:

"What makes the organization addictive is the promise it makes to every employee about the future, which takes them out of the here and now." These promises involve power, money, influence, and social acceptance, the same as the promises of pop culture made-for-TV society.

Having a self-important and grandiose mission statement can make an organization addictive, even if it has little or nothing to do with the actual work being done. "The very fact of having goals can be enough to con employees into believing that everything is all right in the organization."

"One of the ways employees react to this addictive process is by changing their perceptions and thinking, therefore deluding themselves. They try to make themselves believe that the stated mission of the organization is really what is happening, even if what they are seeing and feeling as they work is quite different. When organizations function as the addictive substance, it is in their interest to keep promoting the vision of the mission, because as long as the employees are hooked by it, they are unlikely to turn their awareness to the present discrepancies. They choose to stay numb in order to stay in the organization. The mission is a powerful source of identification for workers. It is a type of philosophical orientation that appeals to their values. Through the mission they find a link between themselves and the organization."

BTW, the sociologists refer to these hidden agendas as the "latent functions" of the organization, in case you ever want to search through the academic papers about this.

<comment><USER5> It seems we have similar interests. I've run across The Addictive Organization too, in addition to Gatto, though in his case I read _Dumbing Us Down_ , not the book you cited. Gatto seems courageous to me; a real freethinker.

Was it Durkheim who said that the first purpose of any large organization is to perpetuate itself, and only secondarily to accomplish whatever mandate it may have?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure about that specific quote, but I know that one of Durkheim's main interests was how organizations, institutions, and culture reproduce themselves, so it would make sense.

I haven't read Dumbing Us Down yet, although I think Underground History was meant to supersede it. I'm sure I'll check it out eventually though.

There is a cool video series with him here too:

<http://www.edflix.org/gatto.htm>

It starts off with a rather poor summary of the book, but then he eventually makes a few important novel points. He comes up with a list of patterns that separate the nation's elite boarding schools from our public schools. Pretty important stuff, albeit you need to sit through the rest of the video to get at it.

<comment><USER5> Just popped into my mind: do you know the book "Systemantics" (also known as "The Systems Bible") by John Gall? It's not on education but is very much in the space we're discussing. It's a brilliant (and hilarious) underground classic. I think you would like it. A lot of people here would. It's irreverent and subversive and incredibly smart and not rigid.

One of its more famous aphorisms (relevant to the software startup crowd) is "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked".

[http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide- Large/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide- Large/dp/0961825170)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, I added it to my Amazon cart. (Although I already have far too much reading I need to do for my startup at the moment.)

<comment><USER5> Heh. This is light reading, the sort of thing you can have fun with for a few pages before falling asleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think schools need to be more economically focused. Teach kids about the realistic options in their future and what they can do to give themselves more choices (avoid premature optimization).

also: I hate when people whine about how hard "the poor" have it. I'm technically living below the poverty line and I live the way an emperor might have lived in ages past.

I have my own personal transportation to take me wherever I want whenever I want. I eat delicious food shipped to me from all around the world. I have fantastic opportunities to make riches beyond what 99.9% of the human population has ever been able to.

I'm sorry what's the problem? Oh, right...school is kinda boring. boo hoo. self starters have always taught themselves what they wanted to know anyway, regardless of the institutions of the time. Our forefathers achieved more with less. I don't think blaming poor schooling excuses us from anything.

<comment><USER7> I wish I could give 10 points.

<comment><USER7> I was downvoted on this comment. That's so funny! I am giving this person an opportunity to downvote me again. Help yourself!

<comment><USER7> And another one...

<comment><USER7> And one more...

<comment><USER7> More?

<comment><USER7> No problem.

<comment><USER7> Take this one.

<comment><USER7> And this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not personally a huge fan of the Public School system. Whether they are intentionally meant to turn students into sheep is one question I don't have the answer to, but I don't think that a centralized system can ever work to create an independent and informed citizenry.

Personally, I've always taken issue with the approach that the government should be directly responsible for the formation of its citizens rather than the reverse.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Whether they are intentionally meant to turn students into sheep is one question I don't have the answer to

Gatto's book makes a pretty good argument that this is the case, although mostly accidently as opposed to the result of any secret conspiracy. Gatto does dig up some pretty telling quotes though. For example,

"We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks."-- Woodrow Wilson, from an address to The New York City High School Teachers Association, Jan. 9th, 1909

I actually went to the New York public library a couple of years ago and found a copy of the speech in the collection of Woodrow Wilson's papers. Here is the full quote in context:

"I do not wonder at it. I think it is hardly just to blame those who have brought this situation about, because this change in modern life has come upon us suddenly. It has confused us. We are in an age so changeful, so transitional, I do not wonder that this confusion has come into our education, and I do not blame anybody. I do not see how it could have been avoided, how we could have avoided trying our hands at a score of things hitherto unattempted to determine at least if they were possible or not. Therefore this is not a subject for cynical comment, this is not a subject for criticism. It is a subject for self-recognition. The present need is that we should examine ourselves and see whether this be true or not; and, if it is true, ask ourselves whether the air has cleared enough, and whether our experiment has gone far enough, to make a definite program, to make a radical change, in the things we have attempted. This is the moment for counsel. The thing that is imperative upon our conscience is that we should ask ourselves whether it be possible to do it differently and better." [...]

"Let us go back and distinguish between the two things that we want to do; for we want to do two things in modern society. We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. You cannot train them for both in the time that you have at your disposal. They must make a selection, and you must make a selection. I do not mean to say that in the manual training there must not be an element of liberal training; neither am I hostile to the idea that in the liberal education there should be an element of the manual training. But what I am intent upon is that we should not confuse ourselves with regard to what we are trying to make of the pupils under our instruction. We are either trying to make liberally-educated persons out of them, or we are trying to make skillful servants of society along mechanical lines, or else we do not know what we are trying to do."

<comment><USER8> I'm not going to say that the case can't be made, or that it is wrong, but that I'm not the one to make it or defend it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's unpleasant how many of his points just ring true in my mind instantly. I connected it with PG's essay, too, where he asks why students should have to ask to go to the bathroom.

But my theory is that a school system cannot be designed in a one-size-fits- all sort of way. There are students who will take advantage of lenient teachers, instead of learning. It is because of them that the rest of the students cannot progress as they could have.

I've wondered about it often. I have no idea what to do. None.

<comment><USER5> _I've wondered about it often. I have no idea what to do. None._

I sympathize. It seems to me that part of the block comes from defining the problem monolithically: how can we take the standard system we have and make a better standard system out of it? Nobody seems to have a good answer to that. Maybe we should stop asking it and instead go through a period of decentralization and even destandardization. Let all sorts of experiments be tried. There's a study I read about that showed that when great schools or great teachers achieve amazing things, attempts to reproduce what they do almost always fail. The problem seems to be in the systematizing impulse itself. Can there even be a bureaucracy that sustains life, joy, creativity?

Here's an example of what I mean (I may have even got this from Gatto). In the traditional one-room farm schoolhouse, there weren't enough children to segregate by age, so by necessity they would work side by side on different things. This has interesting effects. You no longer have the problem that not all kids are at the same level; each is working at his/her level anyway. So, no reason why a bright 9-year-old can't study math with the 15-year-olds (but play with kids their own age at recess). Another example is that because one teacher simply can't address all the different subjects at once, older kids end up teaching and mentoring younger ones. Think of the organizational contortions required to set up things like this in most schools. Of course, I'm not saying that everyone should go to a one-room farm school. My point is that we need a great deal more diversity and that maybe policy should support this instead of trying to fix everything the same way (or even at all).

People will cry out about the risks of destandardization but really, if you stop to think about it, kids _want_ to learn. Passionately. They're hard-wired to do it. What we should be asking is not how we can get them to learn but how we ever manage to program the desire out of them. Personal anecdote: when my daughter was in the third grade (and had a teacher she loved), she would get up in the morning and literally jump for joy that she was going to school. I don't mean little bunny hops... I mean she would jump up and down bigtime and sing "I'm going to schooooool!" Just a short time later (after the teacher she loved was fired and not even allowed to say goodbye to the class... different story) a pallor that I can only call depression came over her about everything associated with school. It took years for signs of intellectual excitement to return.

<comment><USER9> Whoa. Your story is pretty... well, unpleasant, I suppose. Especially at such a young age. It's all too often that people give up on education just because the school system sucks.

At my school, I'm branded as a "nerd", often because I don't think I've joined that group of people who have given up on intellectual curiosity just because the school system is inadequate. What bothers me, though, is that such an attitude is pervasive through a very large portion of my school, even though it is an advanced program school.

Ah well. I hope it will become better. Maybe I'll be able to do something about it someday. I'd certainly love to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Alex3917 - Thank you sir. I really don't have any words to describe what I felt after I read this article. And thank you for the book references. I will be sure to follow up on those.

Mr. Gatto - I certainly hope we can see some of the ideas you suggested in our lifetimes. I am sure it will make for a much better world.

</comment><comment><USER11> In childhood, in early years of school, I perceived teachers as evil and good. In the last years of school we used to label them as "normal" and "crazy" (or "idiots", if one preferred).

My grades were exceptionally high with "good" teachers and low with "evil" throughout all the school. Only recently I liberted myself to start seeing that as a good sign.

I guess, "good" or "normal" teachers in our perception were those who procrastinated from teaching these lessons.

</comment><comment><USER12> Additional reading: "The Idea of a University" by Newman (<http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/>)

To see the roots of many of the pernicious practices: "Democracy and Education" by Dewey ([http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/...](http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/Projects/digitexts/dewey/d_e/chapter02.html))

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd love to send my kids to this school instead [http://go0dspeed.multiply.com/video/item/32/Schools_Designed...](http://go0dspeed.multiply.com/video/item/32/Schools_Designed_for_Learning)

</comment><comment><USER14> Gatto is like the 'red pill' for understanding American education.

</comment><comment><USER15> For the first few "lessons" I thought he was making an analogy to computers, with the students as individual bits.

Great, we're trained to be automatons.</comment>


A Supercharging Milestone - <AUTHOR> http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/supercharging-milestone <comment><USER2> Nice, 168K gallons a month is 5600 a day (assuming 30 day months) or 295 barrels of oil per day [1]. You could supply the grid with the equivalent MW used by the entire super charging network with one solar thermal plant [2]

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=24&t=10](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=24&t=10)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility) \-- had a look at this over the 4th of July weekend, its a pretty neat facility.

<comment><USER3> If I'm reading the figure in the article correctly, 1GWh/month of electricity works out to something like 1.34 MW average load. That much electricity could be supplied by a total of three (1.5MW nameplate) utility-scale wind turbines, at least if you assume the capacity factor (0.3-0.35) seen in the upper midwest.

Put differently, that is about 1/10 of the average electricity consumption of the (midwestern, state) university where I studied.

<comment><USER2> They edited it, it used to say it had produced a 1 GWh _to date_ from all chargers. I wonder if they took that out because it was wrong or because it didn't seem impressive enough?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any stats on where each supercharging station receives its power? Things like the percentage of power supplied to the supercharging station by fossil fuels.

<comment><USER5> They are currently all grid-powered, but the long-term plan is to install solar canopies at all locations (provided by Elon's other company, SolarCity) to offset the power usage. They even plan on making it a profit center for the business eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do any of these stations get busy enough during peak hours so that you have to wait in line for a charging spot?

This happens even at gas stations, but at least you don't have to wait 20 minutes!

<comment><USER7> It's happened to me once or twice, surprisingly mostly at Fremont (the factory). All the supercharging stations have data. When the superchargers were introduced to owners, the idea was that the car (also cellular / data- enabled) would know when it's likely to get to the supercharger, and reserve a timeslot at the charging station. Additionally, there were plans to make it so you could unlock / lock the chargers remotely, and potentially have single chargers able to reach more than one car.

All of this is possible, it's just a matter of time of if, and when it becomes reasonable to go implement it.

<comment><USER8> Also, battery swaps, which is faster than filling a tank of gas (though not free), will help. As Musk put it, when you'd come to a supercharger station, it be a decision between faster (battery swap) or free (supercharger).

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY)

<comment><USER9> I wonder how much a battery swap would cost?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Elon Musk is losing his nerdiness. He should have waited for the 1.21GWh milestone.

</comment><comment><USER11> Have they rolled out battery swapping yet?

<comment><USER12> Battery swapping is dumb. It's like propane tank exchange, except the price is reversed. With propane the tank is relatively cheap and you don't care so much if you get somebody elses used one. With battery costing in the neighborhood of $10K it's a bit different. OTOH if they were to automatically recycle the ones with diminished capacity it may be somewhat more acceptable. But doesn't it still seem a bit odd?

<comment><USER11> DC fast charging like in the supercharger is kinda hard on the battery. It doesn't void the warranty, of course, because then Tesla would be in the ridiculous position of stating that their own chargers damage their cars, but you shouldn't be doing it very often. With battery swapping, you can charge the battery nice and slow.</comment></comment></comment>


Advice for SW entrepreneurs: The Great Startup Idea that I Can't Reveal (Yet) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/03/11/the-great-startup-idea-that-i-cant-reveal-yet/

<comment><USER2> This is "interesting"... ;) I've seen the same thing -- many people are too worried someone will take their idea, so they don't ever talk about it to a wide variety of people. If you "eat like an elephant and poop like a bird" (Guy Kawasaik in Rules for Revolutionaries), and actually talk about your idea to people you meet, then you can get feedback, develop their idea, figure out if there is a market for it, and through serendipity find a person or two who is equally passionate about your idea and may be a good partner to collaborate with you.

Talking with others helps with timing too. It's important to get an idea going so you can get your software built as the demand in the market is accelerating. But at the same time, by bouncing your idea off lots of people you will gain datapoints and then grow intuition about if the market is really ready for this yet. "Too early is sometimes as bad as too late" (Sandra Kurtzig in CEO: Building a Company from the Ground Up).

I've had friends who had the idea for so many things, but didn't do it -- and then someone else did. Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. And as Edison clarified that thought, "I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident. They came by work." Talking to people is part of that work.

<comment><USER3>
       I would consider one of my best friends to be way smarter than I am, maybe even a genius. But he has odd execution patterns.  If a professor gives him an assignment, he'll produce an A relatively effortlessly. He had 3 majors in 5 years, and was in the top 1% in each department.
       I considered him to be an asset, so when I told him about one of my start-up ideas, I expected he'd translate his academic execution into product execution. Definitely not the case.  It was 6 months before I realized this guy was brilliant, but failed to connect the dots in real applications. He just did not have the personal drive to get anything done, nor did he *care*. And this was someone who initially showed a lot interest, and wasn't even a threat!

       My point is that even people who may seem like they may be a threat to copy your idea, probably do not even care enough to pursue it.  I'd be willing to bet that the population of individuals who actually execute on their ideas to completion is pretty rare...so those who execute on others ideas is probably even rarer.

<comment><USER4> Your post is screwing up formatting of the whole page. Please break down the lines. Thanks.

<comment><USER3> ah! i don't know how that happened. i can't seem to edit it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, since ideas can be patented, trademarked, become intellectual property and whatever else, it's understandable that we feel scared about ideas being stolen.

But I think the roots of the problem are basically in our enthusiasm and our (lack of) self-confidence. On one side, we consider our ideas awesome and that anyone who hears them will also think they are the coolest thing since sliced bread. On the other hand, we believe that, if they like it enough (which they obviously do because of the previous point), they will steal/copy it and possibly execute it better than us (because they have more experience, more people, more contacts, more money... infinite reasons).

This article speaks the truth, 99% of the time people won't care or understand, and you will have to chase them to make them believe in your ideas (I'm experienced with the "that's interesting" people :P). But when enthusiasm is strong enough, it's very hard to accept that someone won't like your idea. And if self-confidence levels are low, here comes the problem and the secretive attitude.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This post is also partly based on my experience and discussions at AngelConf. You should always be able to reveal at least vaguely in what space your startup is. So I can help you. If you refuse to give me any information at all, then there is nothing I can do.

The strength of Silicon Valley is in its network and its 3 degrees of separation (if the rest of the world lives by 6 degrees of separation, then Silicon Valley is at 3 or less). Which means that I probably know someone who knows someone who will be greatly helpful to you. Allow me to help by telling me _something_.

</comment><comment><USER6> The third idea is pretty cool. You said they are already making it? Would love to know who?

a community for software developers to share revenue

<comment><USER7> I didn't like the third idea. It sounds like it would have a classic "tragedy of the commons" problem. Each developer spends full effort for each dollar he brings in, but gets only part of the benefit. In addition, being idle has a much lower cost than it would normally would since an individual's idleness is subsidized by the efforts of other developers. This incentivizes each developer to work less hard than they otherwise would.

Now the second idea is brilliant. I can't count the number of times that we had to email our clients private messages while we were on conference calls with potential investors. Having a way to privately talk with our clients would have been beneficial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nothing really new in this post -- but the message bears occasional repeating: ideas are a dime a dozen, it's executing on one that few people can do well.</comment>


Ask HN: Transparency in IT? - <AUTHOR>

If you have a 'firewall team' you've probably run into this before: you try to run some new app or install some new server or connect to a different network, and it fails. Now you've got to start troubleshooting it and at the same time send the firewall team an e-mail to see if they might have a rule blocking your attempt.<p>It would be nice for anyone to be able to look at firewall rules, software deployment/repositories, and account/service access across the network. Does anyone have a simple process to introduce transparency in the operations/network side of their business? <comment><USER2> There are lots of very good (security) reasons this information tends to be kept under wraps. The best thing to do is to involve the security and networks teams in your project at the planning phase so you can identify collab points before they become problems. Yes, I have faced this many, many times and it is incredibly frustrating, especially in controlled environments.

<comment><USER3> It also helps to earn their trust. It has to be _earned_ , though, and this takes time and ongoing collaboration.

Even then, a good team won't break the rules for you. They may, however, be more willing to explain them and to consider rational adaptations.

Generally speaking (more for non-startup environments, I guess), getting along well with your Operations folk can be as much of an aid to your work as anything else. Good ones aren't much interested in bullshit (or bullshitting), though, in my experience; the normal workload already provides sufficient quantities of that.</comment></comment>


Prohibition Tossed a Wet Blanket on America's Inventors - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/things-invented-in-bars <comment><USER2> One of the odd echoes of this is in the nascent cannabis herb vaporizer market. (Controversies and health concerns about the oil-based pens are real but aren't related here.)

There's a positively cambrian explosion of form factors, heater designs, heat sources, materials, control systems, etc. right now in the product space, and it's more or less all driven by crazy people making stuff in their basement and selling it via word of mouth on reddit and instagram and web forums.

No one design has won, so we're still in that "try everything!" mode. It's kind of fun to see.

<comment><USER3> I'd say Pax has won this category.

<comment><USER2> Nope. Arizer and Storz and Bickel are up there and absolutely pulling their weight. The solo, volcano/mighty/crafty are certainly well known, so Pax doesn't have the lock down on brand recognition.

There's a second tier of cheap-but-probably-safe that's companies like boundless or healthy rips.

Then there are the fan favorites / esoteric-nerd things like dynavap or the aforementioned basemenet-makers or hobbyist/lifestyle companies. They're not going to hit mass-market volume but they've got the nerds covered.

Pax is killing it with the Era (but that's for concentrates) and their parent company is Juul, so they're well positioned -- but they are not setting the trend of the market at all. They continue to make good-but-overpriced conduction-only units that are increasingly just totally eclipsed by convection/hybrid units with replaceable batteries or alternative heat sources.

<comment><USER4> the Pax Era is one of the worst concentrate portable device on the market.

<comment><USER5> Why do you say this? It isn't the most cost effective maybe, but it is convenient and the bluetooth control stuff is kinda nice.

<comment><USER4> Because there are numerous better device available like the Saionara, Molecule, Quartz Quest v4, TRVP and many others

<comment><USER5> Wow, I had no idea about any of these. Good to know!

<comment><USER4> check out r/waxpen

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whenever I hear one of these articles about idea exchange and location's impact on innovation, I always wonder if indie game development is a notable exception. Indie success stories frequently suggest one lone developer (like Stardew Valley's Eric Barone) or an extremely intimate team (like Celeste's Matt Thorson). It seems like breakout hits happen in completely random cities/locations and no one area is the definitive "epicenter of game design".

I highly doubt game design is some notable outlier - it's simply a union of software development and creative industries. I think the only reasonable explanations is that the vibrant community and exchange of ideas happens through the internet. If so, I think there are lessons for other entrepreneurs/industries to follow so they can be less geographically bound.

<comment><USER7> Game development eras and their style have a substantial correlation to locations and the teams assembled in them, but as you allude to, increasingly the demographics don't seem to matter as much as the culture, because the capital requirements have dropped so much.

A surprising amount of stuff, for example, came out of Chicago between the 80's and 90's. Why? Because amusement manufacturing was located there, so there was a direct crossover from solid state pinball to video games. Williams, Gottlieb and the rest all operated in the area. For similar reasons the bulk of Japan's game output in the 80's came from its three largest cities.

As the industry became more software-driven, it got easier to spread out, and with the merger mania of the 90's pooling up capital, you got the existence of studios with multiple offices in different cities. But you still needed some infrastructure and financing to run a studio, and so most large game studios are in "hip metros" even today.

But when you get down to the realm of current indie games doing digital distribution and Twitch streaming, your physical bottleneck is approximately the same as a writer: fast internet and basic city services. But writers benefit from having a creative circle, salon or similar gathering, and that creates an effect in indie games which I will forever remember from a TIGSource forum thread as the "globetrotting international hipster clique": creators who live very far apart and only see each other at big conferences. Often this ends in people from the same city learning of each other's existence by flying to a _different_ city where a conference is. After you hit a critical mass of people aware of each other in a city, it's just a matter of running a regular local event.

And what I've noticed personally in some 9 years of attending or helping host those events is that while the games scene in a city will derive most of its people from other industries(e.g. in SF you get a lot of tech workers with a hobby project) the way in which it's shaped depends on the type of regular events held and their focus. Some events are focused on business or technical lectures; others are co-working of some form; still others are public-facing showcases. Each of those has their purpose and you do need a sufficiently large city to experience all categories, since without a balance you end up with an average game output that has too little creativity, is poorly shaped as a product, lacks in technical ability, etc. There is a lot of wasted time in indie games that results from someone, somewhere retreating into the work without other eyes on it.

<comment><USER8> > A surprising amount of stuff, for example, came out of Chicago between the > 80's and 90's.

The Dallas / Ft Worth area has a similar cluster story around early 3D gaming, thanks heavily to 3D Realms and then id Software. Companies like Ritual, Hipnotic, GOD Games, ION Storm, Gearbox. Then you also had Ensemble Studios, Terminal Reality and others in the area. DWANGO down in Houston was heavily built on what id Software did. Dozens of small indie companies spawned in the DFW area thanks to the foundation put down by some of those companies.

"Commercial real estate firm JLL found gaming companies are on the rise in North Texas. According to JLL, nine colleges offer gaming degree programs that help build a labor pool in North Texas. The firm counts 87 gaming companies in North Texas. That's nearly a third of all gaming companies in Texas, which only trails California in the number of design and development studios."

"It used to be that Austin was the de facto answer for game development in Texas. But actually, Dallas has a rich history of game development companies going back to id Software," explained Bettner. "That spawned a bunch of studios in the area."

[https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/Gaming-Gaining-Ground-in- No...](https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/tech/Gaming-Gaining-Ground-in-North- Texas-494553621.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Man, Econ really is the miserable science. "I started with a politically charged theory passed down from The Elders and, after 6 years of being paid to search for evidence of that theory, guess what, I found some".

For starters, using patents as a proxy for innovation is dubious at best. Patents are a terrible proxy for innovation. My own experience has been the inverse: organizations/individuals that patenting shit lots of shit are consistently the least inventive. Not sure if this was true in the early 20th century, but it certainly is today.

</comment><comment><USER10> There might be some confounding variables at play... Such as counties voting in favor of prohibition could be more conservative which in turn could be caused by them having an older population. Older people are, generally, both more conservative and less inventive than younger people.

That said, all the best music was made in the 60's and 70's so maybe he's onto something. :)

<comment><USER11> This is a bit of a tangent, but sometimes I get confused by the US definition of "conservative."

It seems to me that someone who is conservative would be against something like the prohibition both because it changes the status quo and because it results in regulation and a bigger government.

Has this always been the case in the US or has the word conservative changed meaning at some point in history? Did the people who vote for the Prohibition back at the turn of the 20th century identify themselves as conservative? Were they identified as conservative by others around them?

<comment><USER12> Conservative Politics are not necessarily conservative (i.e. keep it the same) and Progressive Politics are not necessarily progressive (i.e. make progress). Thats the beauty of American Politics. It literally starts with lies and only gets better from there... :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you spend less time drunk you're less likely get suckered into paying people to file worthless patents for your useless brainfarts.

Patent filing is a really weak proxy for the creation of actually useful inventions.

</comment><comment><USER14> To me this seems like correlation, but I'm not convinced of causation.

</comment><comment><USER15> Imagine what drug prohibition has done...</comment>


How bands can leverage data to book tours (viz at bottom)[OC] - <AUTHOR> https://www-drv.com/site/yzfx9gjqtwpqwdilye5zcw/TheBandcampTourPlanner/ <comment><AUTHOR> Data was scraped from Bandcamp using Selenium in Python. Then the social graph was generated using the networkx Python package and exported into Gephi.</comment>


Overnight success takes a long time - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/overnight-success-takes-long-time.html <comment><USER2> The risk is that the world will change around you in the meantime and make what you're working on irrelevant.

My two previous employers were both started in 2001, in terms of the idea and not the corporate entity. Last I heard, they are both still around, though in one case a founder let the company fold and then ran off to China with the IP to start again with cheap labor. But the ideas are increasingly irrelevant now.

In one case, the product was software to tunnel through firewalls. Most recent products just build that into the product itself now (witness: FogCreek CoPilot, AIM, anonymous proxies), using essentially the same technology we were working on 8-9 years ago (FogCreek calls it the Reflector) so there is less need for a general solution.

In the other case, the product started out as a desktop quant analytics interface. But then around 2002-2004, everything switched to the web. They did too, but they fell off the leading edge of technology: other firms now have much more web expertise than they do. And now with the financial crisis, I'd guess that people are increasingly suspicious of quant analytics.

I keep thinking about whether it's better to go for breadth or depth (in anything, not just startups). The answer always seems "Go for depth, _as long as you're going deep into the right thing_." But it's often not possible to tell what the right thing is until you've gone deep into it. By then, of course, you've already sunk a lot of effort into exploring the territory. Maybe that's why people ascribe so much of success to pure luck.

<comment><USER3> Yes, timing is always an issue. It can actually be a problem in both directions though -- many startups are actually too early for the market/tech. Marc Andreessen has some good stuff to say about this, but I can't find it at the moment.

Getting market timing right is a simple matter of predicting the future ;)

<comment><USER4> Paul may be referring to these seminal posts:

The Only Thing That Matters: <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca- gu-2.html>

How much funding is too little? Too much? <http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/the- pmarca-guid.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It continues to baffle me that GMail is the only client* with all-in-a-page threaded email. Some desktop apps make a stab at it, but generally limit it to some kind of highlighting by subject line. Even if it didn't have the search, I'd stay with Gmail for that.

* Well, Zoe had a go, but was always buggy and now seems dead.

<comment><USER6> Mutt has email threads. It had them for as long as I've been using it (6+ years). It also has regex search and selection, besides other things...

<comment><USER7> Mutt's threads aren't all-in-a-page; you only see one message at a time.

<comment><USER6> Yes, you are correct. Though in mutt you can hit 'n'/'p' while reading a message in a thread and you will move to the next/previous email in the threading order. I would imagine one would need to use scrolling in gmail for any substantial thread which results in a pretty similar experience (i.e., you only see one or two emails at a time).

<comment><USER8> Anyhow, I prefer threaded + n/p myself. For complicated discussions (like at work) it's much better to see exactly which mail is in reply to which (not just time based).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's really nice to see him promote Posterous (as opposed to Google's Blogger) as the easiest way to blog thoughts.

<comment><USER10> Yet Posterous is not one of the featured services on Friendfeed (you can do it manually via RSS).

<comment><USER3> Nor is Blogger or most other blog services. You can simply add them as "Blog" though. The "featured" services are generally things other than blogs where it's friendlier to ask for their username instead of url (such as YouTube), or that require other special processing.

<comment><USER11> Thank you for the mention, Paul. We really appreciate it.

I think the main reason why we'd like to be able to add Posterous through the FF main page is the fact that people don't understand RSS, especially our users who are brand new to blogging and are doing it for the first time through email.

In the longer term as FF reaches mainstream, these considerations around dead simple import of feeds become even moreso important.

<comment><USER12> As an alternative, vote up (er, Like) my suggestion: [http://friendfeed.com/e/c5a09856-762d-43ad-9298-b32080b4190a...](http://friendfeed.com/e/c5a09856-762d-43ad-9298-b32080b4190a/Add- feed-X-to-friendfeed-via-web/)

Then you, I, or anyone passionate about getting her/his own site easily integrable with FriendFeed can set up a UI to do it from our end.

<comment><USER3> I finally got around to adding that. You can now prefill the configuration and set a "next" url so that FriendFeed can be easily integrated into a configuration flow on your own site.

For example, [http://friendfeed.com/settings/services/blog?url=http://mybl...](http://friendfeed.com/settings/services/blog?url=http://myblogurl.com/&next=http://myservice.com/afteradd) will add the blog <http://myblogurl.com/> and redirect the user to <http://myservice.com/afteradd> afterwords. There is also a "nextcancel" parameter which can be used to distinguish between success and cancel.

<comment><USER12> Thanks! I feel befriended and fed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life." -- Sun Tzu, Art of War

i.e. Be patient and don't give in.

<comment><USER14> For a book of vague generalizations, you should be able to mine a much more relevant quote than the above :>

<comment><USER13> Didn't mine it... I just had that one in mind and this post reminded me of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like FriendFeed for the fact that it doesn't try to suck people in. It is efficient. Unlike Facebook (which seems like it's trying to re-invent everything on the Internet inside it's little bubble o'beacon-tracking), FriendFeed unobtrusively allows each one of its services to showcase a core competency: _e.g._ flickr for photos, twitter for nonsensical tidbits, youtube for video, rss for blogs, SU for those random and great finds, etc.

By not nudging users into any one specific direction, it effectively aggrandizes collective genius.

Now, it just needs an option for HN posts. . .

<comment><USER16> I like being contrary, so I'll take the side of Facebook advocacy: by "showcasing," as you say, Friendfeed makes their service far less efficient, and to some degree less valuable. It adds nothing but a place to visit everything at once, which means that it hurts the communal aspects of those other sites and reduces the visual efficiency of each. Facebook, on the other hand, centralizes everything, which means that as a user you can use it and only it and have everything you need. I have relatives who use Facebook because it's so easy to understand.

Also, what does it mean to effectively aggrandize collective genius?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I always look at friendfeed as the beginning of something that I could broadcast to my friends that don't haunt the web that much. What if you could take the feed and somehow turn it into a show, where a more passive web viewer could just watch?

<comment><USER12> What I did a few days ago was to create a friendfeed account for my family email list, and set it up to get weekly email summaries. The first summary hasn't arrived yet, or I'd tell you how it's going.

<comment><USER17> Set it up to be as easy to use as ourdoings...and you're on to something.

<comment><USER12> I appreciate the compliment. I know there's plenty more I could do to make OurDoings easier for the people who put stuff on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe the only reason I don't have friendfeed is it's welcome page.

 _FriendFeed helps you discover and discuss interesting stuff that your friends and family find on the web._

Like I have time with which to look at interesting stuff after spending all day on news.yc....

<comment><USER12> Check out FriendFeed's "best of day" or "best of week" feature. Or just have it email you a daily or weekly summary.

<comment><USER19> You just made me log into friendfeed, but I don't see those features. Where are they?

<comment><USER12> Click on the "Account" link (upper right) and look for the section "Email settings". It's the checkbox labeled "Send me my friendfeed every..." with a daily/weekly option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Stick in it. Adapt to the market, when you are no coding, you had better be selling and when you are not selling you had better be marketing. And be patient.

<comment><USER12> My 2009 resolution is to sell better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> the only over night sucesses I have heard of are those 2 startups that flipped within hours for around 1.5k each, so there is some truth in this article</comment>


Show HN: Broadcasts – newsletter of developers looking for work - <AUTHOR> https://www.moonlightwork.com/broadcasts <comment><AUTHOR> Today we're launching Broadcasts, which is a newsletter of developers looking for work. We're trying to make it easier to source developers for growing tech teams. Just sign up, and we'll email you a list of matches every week who you can message in the app. No more browsing LinkedIn for hours, or waiting for people to apply to your job post.

For developers: finding the right job can be hard. Rather than having to go find the right job post and apply, we're trying to invert the process. Share what you're looking for and what you're good at, and we'll send it out to hiring managers that match you. It's good for contract or full-time work, and everything in between. Your matches go out to hiring managers at over 1,000 companies - from 2-person startups to publicly-traded corporations.

(Want to get featured in the newsletter as a developer? Just join here: [https://www.moonlightwork.com/onboarding/developer](https://www.moonlightwork.com/onboarding/developer))</comment>


Why the CrunchPad is toast - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-crunchpad-is-toast-2009-7

<comment><USER2> Place to go for product comparisons between two products that have yet to see the light of day and which are entirely unfamiliar to the reviewer. Just what was the point of this post?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Apple's marketing machine is stronger than CrunchPad'

That alone is probably enough.</comment>


Ask HN: Why isn't all stock trading done by algorithm? - <AUTHOR> I can't understand how a human, even with heaps of intelligence and education, is better at predicting which stocks will go up/down than an algorithm that can look at all the data in the entire market. What skill do stock traders use that can't be replaced by computation? <comment><USER2> Computers trade most effectively with technical indicators. These are things like price history, volume, etc. These trades are very effective in the short term, where trades can happen in terms of seconds or milliseconds. This is where computers excel and humans fall short. This sort of trading is based mostly on breadth. If you look up the fundamental law of active portfolio management, you'll see that breadth is less effective (exponentially less so) than skill is.

In the case of the long term, however, trading is done with fundamental indicators. These things can be more or less intangible and have to do with market events, people, and other indicators of company value that are hard to translate into math. Using fundamental indicators for portfolio management is what humans are better at, and these pay off in the long term (see Warren Buffet). These trades are done with skill, which, as I stated earlier, is exponentially more effective at creating gains than breadth.

In short, it takes a huge amount of breath to get the gains required by a relatively small amount of skill. Computers are better by far at breadth, while humans are better (for now) at skill. This, I think, is why humans still trade.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention the spectrum between intuition/innuendo and flat out insider trading knowledge that is cornerstone to the market -- trading algorithms don't do well against this human factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Information not in the market.

Stock traders trade on rumor, fact and everything in between. They (can) look at who the company is run by, and how much they trust him, and look at the people in upper management. They can look at and understand news.

Part of the difficulty of the stock market is that it isn't a closed system: people make decisions to sell stocks based on the fact that they are poor this month. Until computers can understand and process all the external data, people will need to be in the trading loop.

The big exception to this is the trading the noise: high frequency traders trade against each other, closing the spread in bid/ask prices. However, they are essentially trading against other computers at that timescale, which makes them pretty amenable to algorithms.

<comment><USER5> You reminded me of this scene from Trading Places:

Randolph Duke: Exactly why do you think the price of pork bellies is going to keep going down, William?

Billy Ray Valentine: Okay, pork belly prices have been dropping all morning, which means that everybody is waiting for it to hit rock bottom, so they can buy low. Which means that the people who own the pork belly contracts are saying, "Hey, we're losing all our damn money, and Christmas is around the corner, and I ain't gonna have no money to buy my son the G.I. Joe with the kung-fu grip! And my wife ain't gonna f... my wife ain't gonna make love to me if I got no money!" So they're panicking right now, they're screaming "SELL! SELL!" to get out before the price keeps dropping. They're panicking out there right now, I can feel it.

Randolph Duke: [on the ticker machine, the price keeps dropping] He's right, Mortimer! My God, look at it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You're overestimating the effectiveness of computers in taking in data and finding patterns. If you throw data naively at an algorithm, you'll get garbage. It's especially difficult to make sense out of trading data because of the sheer size and percentage of noise.

For any given trading strategy, a ton of thought, testing, and domain knowledge goes into creating the algorithm. It is not a black box that writes itself.

That said, computers are far more effective at certain tasks, especially latency sensitive simple calculations, just as calculators are far better at doing arithmetic.

<comment><USER7> I agree. And the OP is also underestimating the effectiveness of insider trading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well the truth is that for some firms it is for about 99.9% of all trades.

Renaissance Technologies founder Jim Simmons is famous for saying they didn't override the algorithm.

In practice most HFT firms do a mix of both. The algos will do the vast bulk of the trading but you have human traders monitoring algos to do clean ups for cases where the algo gets "stuck". What defines "stuck" really depends on the sophistication of the algo and the firm itself.

Some algo's, such as internalizers's for crossing bought flow are so simple that there probably doesn't need to be much over site at all.

Market making is very similar, with the exception of a flash crash where they might pull out, market making algos should just run themselves.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well for starters, someone has to write the algorithms. Not everyone has vast amounts of computing power to find the right inputs for the right algorithms or genius level quants to write the math which coders turn into strategies. There are so many small niches in the market that a human can still make a reasonable living if they find an area not traded by others aka "making a market". Now when it comes to competing with the machines, you pretty much nailed it.

Source: I work in electronic trading and have the past ~7+ years.

<comment><USER10> Would you happen to know some good reads (either on- or off-line) for someone interested in computer trading with a technical background (currently doing a Msc. In Computational Science != Computer Science)?

I have been interested in doing a bit of electronic trading as a hobby (and hopefully a small profit, but I know better than to hope for now) and possibly a back-up career path. But while I've found enough information about trading in general I found it rather hard to find anything dealing with automated trading specifically beyond _very_ simple models.

<comment><USER11> Try this blog and book, a rare mix of practical code and market analysis, [http://qoppac.blogspot.com/p/systematic-trading-start- here.h...](http://qoppac.blogspot.com/p/systematic-trading-start-here.html)

<comment><USER10> Thanks, seems to be some useful stuff in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are a lot of different schools of thought about approaching the stock market. One of them is the "chart" approach, where you (or an algorithm) try to discern the future movements of a company's stock price based on the past performance. Sometimes this works. Mostly, though, it doesn't.

There's also a big difference between "trading" and "investing." Trading is what you've described -- buying shares in the morning and hoping they'll go up in the afternoon so you can sell them later. Investing is buying shares of the company to become a part owner and hold them for years or decades, not days.

If you looked at NFLX's chart in 2012, you could "discern" that the share price would continue to hover around that price, maybe go up a little, maybe go down a little. And you could have bought it in September 2012 for $8 a share and sold for a nice $1 profit in October 2012 for $9 a share (split adjusted). But what the chart wouldn't have told you -- and would never have been able to tell you -- is that it would skyrocket in 2013 and up to its current split-adjusted price of $110 a share. The thing is, the chart never would have told you about this. And even a "pure" numerical analysis like could be done by a computer -- P/E ratios, cash flows, etc -- would not have predicted that growth. You could do DCFs all day every day in 2012 and never predict Netflix's rise. There are a lot of things that go into a company's rise that aren't numerical, like the quality of management, market moat, market growth, etc. And, of course, you had to buy it, and hold it for years, in order to see that return.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I should probably note that I'm a bit biased in this. I work for The Motley Fool, which advocates for long-term buy and hold investing, and produce a podcast for growth investors called Rule Breaker Investing.)

<comment><USER13> Good point about trading versus investing. When index investing advocates say that it's hard to beat the market over the long term, I've always wondered what the difference is with traders. Do their returns beat the S&P500? Does an individual who trades forex as their day job do better than stuffing their money in an index fund for 40 years? Lately I've learned that larger traders can provide value apart from buy&hold, e.g. market making, finding the right price for something, shorting bubbles.

<comment><USER12> I don't have specific numbers on traders, but I do know that 80% of mutual funds underperform their benchmarks. One reason (of many) is that they're under pressure to provide numbers every quarter, or to seem like they're reacting when something short-term happens, so they sell out of positions that would have been more profitable had they held onto them.

Index funds are a great solution for investors who want to invest passively and get the market return (which averages 10% a year over the long term -- might be -20% and +30% year-over-year, though).

The thing with shorting bubbles is extremely difficult to get right, and "finding the right price" doesn't necessarily mean you're making a good decision. Amazon was trading around $300 a share earlier this year -- which many trader types saw as outrageous -- but it has doubled this year alone.

I suppose, in general, I follow the Black Swan approach: humans are terrible at predicting the future. Absolutely awful at it. But I'll take a "bet" on -- by which I mean, buy part of -- a company with great management/people and solid financials (i.e., no debt, positive revenue growth, FCF positive).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Former investment banker here. This is a question I had when I hit the desk, and it's an important question.

The short answer to your question is: because most of the volume traded on exchanges is large blocks of stock being bought and sold by institutional investors, and you need humans to make these deals happen.

Longer explanation as follows:

On the trading floor [0], you have two groups of people: the sales team and the traders.

The sales team gets paid when they make markets, i.e., connect buyers and sellers. Specifically, the financial institution takes a fee that's a very small % of the overall transaction volume, and some of that goes into the sales team's bonus pool. The more stock trades flow through the firm (specifically, their business unit), the more they get paid.

The traders, on the other hand, gets paid to do two things, which are really the same thing: a) not put too much of the firm's capital at risk and b) set the firm up to make money by buying securities low and selling them high. Every trader has a "P&L" (profit & loss) number, which is the total amount of money they've made or lost for the firm since the start of the fiscal year. They get paid a bonus based on this number. They tend to know exactly what their number is at any given time.

So, there is actually a lot of tension on the trading floor between the sales team and the traders, because the sales team wants a lot of volume to go through their business unit, and any given trader wants to maximize her P&L.

Real world example might be: the sales dude gets a call from a hedge fund saying, "we want to sell $100mm of our shares in Alphabet at $720". He then shouts over to the trader (who sits close to him) to tell her about the call and she thinks for a couple seconds [1] and then says, "you need to make a market for 80mm of those shares at that price, I'm only taking 20mm."

In other words, the trader is saying that she'll only tie up $20mm of the firm's capital on this particular trade [2]. The sales person might come back and say, "c'mon, they took that $50mm of Microsoft stock you were trying to get rid of last quarter, we as a firm owe them a favor" to which the trader might respond, "OK, we'll take $30mm tops". So then the sales person will get on the phone and start calling everyone (other mutual / hedge funds, pension funds, etc) who might be interested in buying Alphabet at $720. Maybe the sales person makes it happen; maybe they don't. In any case, they need to figure out whether they can get 70 million dollars worth Alphabet stock pre- sold to other people in the market at $720 before they get back to the hedge fund trying to sell it with a response as to whether they can make the trade.

All of this involves MASSIVE HUMAN FACTORS. I'm sure we will one day be able to train AI to work through various constructs of "we owe them a favor" but right now you still need humans to get big trades like this done. And again, big trades like this constitute the majority of the overall volume in the market. So, that's why trades don't run entirely on algorithms...yet.

[0] I was in banking, not S&T, but have a decent understanding of how this works.

[1] Being able to make decisions of this magnitude in a couple of seconds (and have them be good ones) is one of the two skills you need to have as a trader; the other one is not letting the outcome of the last trade (good or bad) affect your thinking on the next trade.

[2] There is potential for both upside and downside in a decision like this; if the stock appreciates, the firm can profit by selling the stock at a higher price than it paid, but the reverse is also true. This is also an example of why "proprietary trading" is such a blurry line. In order to make markets for big trades, firms usually have to put their own capital at risk, even for a few minutes. At what point are they trading for their own profit vs. temporarily assuming risk in order to broker a deal between two counterparties? Go read Matt Levine's archived columns at Bloomberg if you find stuff like this interesting.

<comment><USER15> So once the pre-sell is agreed on are orders made on the open market? Or do these deals take place outside of that?

<comment><USER14> No, the shares change hands between parties via the licensed broker-dealer. However, the trade is reported to the exchange assuming the stock is listed.

The key here is that Big Mutual Fund Inc. doesn't want to announce to the world that it's trying to sell a massive volume of shares; it wants to get the deal arranged quietly so that other people in the market don't trade the stock down in anticipation.

The price of the trade will be continually adjusted until the trade is executed. Usually the firm has an approved range to work within. If the price steps outside this range, many more phone calls will ensue.

<comment><USER15> I see, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What is an algorithm in your definition?

If it includes where and how to place the trades (a smart order router) I would say 99% of trades are managed by an Algo. Also there are the "dumb" VWAP, POV, TWAP algos which represent the bulk of "smart" buyside money as internally most firms use vwap as benchmark.

The bulk of retail orders in the US are on the other side of an algo from citadel, knight or citi. And often buying 100 shares of MSFT at market only really needs a decent SOR to provide BestEx.

Block trading still often gets fed to VWAP algos unless the stock is illiquid.

Finally the most interesting execution algos (implementation shortfall algos) are hard to explain and only statistically outperform.

If you are talking about actual investing - the first question is which asset class in which to park your money. If you can get an algo to do that (like Renaissance) you will be rich.

</comment><comment><USER17> Because ultimately, stock prices move not based on "the market" but on things happening in the real world?

How does an algorithm interpret e.g. an Apple Keynote? By the time Twitter sentiment analysis (if such thing is really useful) gives results, an human trader already took a position...

<comment><USER18> Humans are better at recognizing satire as well, April Fools jokes have famously caused some algorithms to react poorly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why do I need an algorithm to find a good business, buy shares, and sit on them forever?

</comment><comment><USER20> There are limits to algorithms. Stock prices are affected by human behaviour, which can't always be predicted.

Not to mention the various macro variables, like wars, weather, crime, etc... Plus, what time frame should the algorithms trade on? They're very good for predicting the very short term, I haven't seen much evidence that they're good for predicting longer time spans.

While algos eat up arbitrage and electronic brokers replace human ones, humans are still very good at other forms of trading... Not to mention, a large part of market activity isn't even trading - it's long term investing and collecting dividends.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's impossible to create an algorithm that encompasses all the factors that contribute to a company's stock price (or, perhaps more accurately, all the factors that a given investor _believes_ will affect the stock price). There's also an implementation gap between the model a stock analyst can create in Excel and its implementation as an algorithm. The former is within the reach of far more people than the latter.

Finally, don't forget that somebody has to design and write the algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a pretty good question... Not sure if it will be solved here.

I used to be a value investor around 2000-2008. A value investor would be something like Buffet or Peter Lynch. However I did make a lot money in Sept. 08 because I determined the market was over valued.

What I didn't forsee, was how much the dollars the Federal reserve would print and inflate the economy.

Regardless, after that I built my own algorithm, because I no longer believe in the structure of the market. I would rater trust numbers. Meaning there are to many analyst pumping stocks, federal reserve, insider trading, spoofing trades, ETFs, deratives, and financial warfare it's hard to make a true value investment. Yes, I have read the buffet / Grahm books, but those are over ~60 old.

I think it is Virtu (electronic trading / hedge fund) that hasn't had a day where they lost money since early 2009? I know Goldman and JP Morgan 90% of the time trade every day for a profit. So a lot of the market is already trading electronically. I think zerohedge.com has estimated the 70% of the market trades on electronically and that article was few years ago.

It's funny, because I have devised methods using social media / programming to manipulate the price of stocks. If I can think of ways to do that I'm sure sure Wall St. already is doing it.

Anyways here my algorithm it tracks over 500 stocks: [http://www.strategic- options.com/trade/](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/)

<comment><USER23> Your site charges $600/year. That's 6% of a $10,000 portfolio. Do you think it can make a 6% gain in a year after taxes and inflation to cover its costs for that size portfolio? 6% gain is about the long term average of the S&P500, after inflation, so you're proposing doubling the market gain.

<comment><USER22> Good question.

Let's not forget that S&P was down ~40% in 2008. So you are correct that long term average is ~6%, but then you have years like that, kind of makes the long term average meaningless. Don't forget your financial adviser took a cut on your losses in 08 as well.

At $600 a year is pretty cheap in comparison to what other trading tools. (news letters, chat rooms). This isn't necessarily for people looking a retirement fund.

I'm also marketing something cheaper [http://www.strategic- options.com/trade/alerts](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/alerts) but this is for people who trade semi-regularly. I'm not sure if you fit in that marketing demographic. However, you can see from the website some stocks like Amazon have return far greater amount than the $600 initial cost.

This new ETF / index strategy is nice, I working on a portfolio that would only trade ETFs. That would charge only 1.25% of AUM. But that's still in the works...

<comment><USER23> So you're not really sure it could make up its cost?

<comment><USER22> The particular service that I'm offering, the membership. It could surely make up your cost... But it is more oriented towards do it yourself traders, it's not necessarily geared for Buy and Hold. For example on 1/28/15 the algorithm produced a buy signal on Amazon. If you followed that tip on 1/28 or 1/29, then you would have received ~100% return your investment. [http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/stock/amazoncom- inc](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/stock/amazoncom-inc)

So your $10,000 dollar invest would now be worth $20,000. That would surly cover you membership cost of $600. You can find other winners here: [http://www.strategic- options.com/trade/open/market_analysis/...](http://www.strategic- options.com/trade/open/market_analysis/winners) (click the winners tab)

I also have a Wiki/FAQ here: [http://www.strategic- options.com/trade/open/wiki](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/open/wiki)

If you have any other question feel free to email here chad (at) strategic- option.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Skill? I'm putting up trades as an investment. My money can't just sit around in a bank account forever, it needs to be invested to make actual gains.

All the hedge-fund managers that claim to have algorithmic trading have extremely high expense ratios. So its cheaper if I made trades myself.

I mean, its only $7 to execute a trade off of Scottrade or E-Trade. While buying a mutual fund with algorithmic trading will cost you like 50 to 200 basis points per year.

Yeah, its cheaper to trade in the raw or to just buy SPY or Vanguard funds (which are passively invested without algorithms)

</comment><comment><USER25> The amount of trading done by machines decreases as your investing timeframe increases.

So at the extreme (high frequency trading), all trading is indeed done by machines.

</comment><comment><USER26> In addition to an algorithm not having all available information on the market there is also the fact that any niche or inefficiency in the market can be duplicated by others until it is negated.

If you discovered that the market always goes up on Tuesday and drops on Wednesday that only works until everyone else discovers the same thing and starts selling on Tuesday and buying on Wednesday.

</comment><comment><USER27> Most stock brokerages spend lots of times gathering data from the companies themselves -- the management group, the customers, industry analysts, etc. They are not making investment (BUY/HOLD/SELL) recommendations based on the past fluctuations of the market, rather on their "expert" appraisal of the company's worth versus its current stock price.

</comment><comment><USER28> You mean the computers that can't even understand the sentence "We saw grand canyon flying to chicago."

</comment><comment><USER29> I recommend to read Warren Buffet or his teacher Benjamin Graham. Buffet uses a computer, but only for Bridge playing.

</comment><comment><USER30> market conditions are always changing as are regulations. In 2008, they implemented an emergency short sale rule that banned short selling for a select set of stocks. An algorithm would not know what that means, humans have to step in to ensure stocks are not shorted during these times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgive my ignorance, but would it not be quite easy to tell the algorithm not to short certain stocks?

<comment><USER31> You're asking the wrong question. That's just one case where the computer doesn't understand the human side of things.

What you should be wondering is what are some cases where there is absolutely no advantage to using a computer. Look up the story of "George Soros breaks the bank of England." Or Hedge funds shorting Volkswagen when it was the most expensive stock in the world. Only to find out that Porsche owns 75% of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Fortunately, not all investments are based purely on technical analysis for short run gains.

<comment><USER33> Even the ones that are, are basically a poker game between at least two intelligences, and AI is notoriously not that good at poker. There are plenty of stories about human vs AI poker players to google for where the AI either loses miserably or under weirdly limited circumstances merely loses significantly.

The computers do beat human when the game is intentionally played too fast for humans to physically / biochemically keep up (HFT) and humans usually destroy algos for long term (admitted or not insider trading or line of business expertise). The only really interesting timescale is the daytrader/poker player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The simple reason is that people make money by trading stocks. And they make enough to keep doing it instead of doing something else.

It's simple economics. If they wouldn't be able to make money they probably wouldn't trade.

<comment><USER35> well, the popularity of gambling shows that there's more to it than that. There's thrill, the perception of control, habit, and bad-math too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've been trying to find patterns ([http://newsp.in](http://newsp.in)). I dont believe its an exact science yet, but its always fun to try.

</comment><comment><USER37> How would an algorithm react to / speculate on the most recent news of, say, the VW pollution-cheating fiasco? What about embargoes or war breaking out between certain countries?

<comment><USER9> Using sentiment analysis. In fact, there are some traders (crazily!), which do just that.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/tweets-give-birds-eye-view-of- st...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/tweets-give-birds-eye-view-of- stocks-1436128047)

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

<comment><USER38> An algorithm parsing the aggregate reaction of mostly non-experts, mostly to news delivered over relatively slow mainstream media channels, is going to be _much_ slower than a human hearing the investor briefing and hitting the "sell at any price" button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Because algorithms can't wine and dine potential investors to convince them they're the best in the business for picking stocks.

<comment><USER40> Machiavellian. You are also overlooking pump and dump Twitter accounts which sway stock by micro-increments, this tactic becoming more of an art than a science these days (Twitter clamped down on those accounts in recent years). Also see [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/twitter- hoax_n_2850...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/twitter- hoax_n_2850892.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They're not. Retail trading is a fools game.

</comment><comment><USER42> [https://xkcd.com/1570/](https://xkcd.com/1570/)

</comment><comment><USER43> Limited computing power, uncertainty and the false perception of perfect information (or perfect intuition).

</comment><comment><USER44> Computers aren't normally so good at predicting the future?

</comment><comment><USER45> Even if at some point humans no longer had any edge, by pure randomness some of them would still have really good performance. So even in a perfectly efficient market you wouldn't expect humans to be taken over.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've been in the market for over a decade, and here's my take:

\- Lack of sophistication. "Classically" trained finance people don't know much about computers. I took a finance class at a top business school, and it's nothing compared to Engineering. A bit of time-value-of-money and maybe some option math, but really it doesn't come close to the sophistication of a CS or Engineering course. I went to a meeting last week with a guy who wanted an automated trading system. He hadn't heard of Python. He didn't have any idea how to execute other than on 3rd party programs (which of course use algos, but he was just providing the decisions).

\- Lack of scale. There's a lot of family offices who have a few tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. If they wanted an algo trading guy, they'd have to pay him a lot of money, you'd want more than one, and you'd need infrastructure. Plus there's the risk you get all this, hire the guys, and their results are no better than random. A lot of small fortunes like this tend to spend more time in tech-soft areas, like private equity or private debt. The stock trades are an afterthought that they can't spend much resource on.

\- Two kinds of decision making: arbitrage and investment. The put it bluntly, arbitrage is easy to mechanize. If some guy quotes some options at the wrong value, it's obvious you want to trade with him. There's looser arbs (things that sort of always come back to normal), but the principle is the same. In some sense, it's not a financial challenge, it's a technological one. For investment (I think XYZ corp will go up), you need to have a sense of what risk you want to take. Utility functions are not easy to put into code. You can try, but you end up with situations where you decide not to have the algo on. There's also the principal-agent problem; most traders are agents, they need to look good to their boss. They need to be able to explain why they are betting on some company. Often, more effort goes into how to justify your trades than what trades to do.

\- Things that can't go into a machine: I worked with a guy who used to go meet the CEOs, look them in the eye, and ask them if they'd make money. Now I'm not saying this approach works, but if this is your investment edge, how are you ever going to put that in a machine?

\- Insider information: taking this in the loose sense, not the criminal one. If you're highly dependent on understanding some part of the market better than others, you may be better off talking and networking rather than coding. Goldmans are great at this. Every time you meet them, they offer a bit of info in exchange for yours. It lets them see things like the mortgage bubble before it happens, whereas a model would probably have issues due to the small amount of computerized data.

</comment><comment><USER47> Humans invest, computers trade. Its not about who is better at predicting. Most companies will gain value over time. There's no prediction to it. Algorithms are not predicting either. They are trying to fake out other algorithms and profit off of market inefficiencies. You don't need an algorithm, though, to buy something and then sell it six months later.</comment>


"No-fly" trial: Closing arguments - <AUTHOR> http://papersplease.org/wp/2013/12/07/no-fly-trial-day-5-part-1-closing-arguments/ <comment><USER2> Judge Alsup is incredible! You may remember he's the judge that learned to code during the Oracle v. Google trial

> [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57445082-94/judge- > william-a...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57445082-94/judge-william- > alsup-master-of-the-court-and-java/)

<comment><USER3> I seem to remember that he didn't exactly start from zero, but had some idea prior to that and simply learned more about Java. Just sayin', because I think it makes it even better.

<comment><USER4> He has a B.S. in mathematics too. I imagine that was useful as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I apologize again to the press and the members of the public for having to ask you to leave…. I don't believe that the SSI [Sensitive Security Information] is really that sensitive, and I believe that it's a mistaken public policy to exclude you, but for the time being I have no choice."

Judge Alsup for president!

<comment><USER6> Is there other situations where a judge judgment is not taken into account in his tribunal?

I know nothing of usa law..

<comment><USER7> The judge is bound by law and procedure during a court case - they can't just say "make this so" and it is so.

Judge Alsup will have authority to rule on the outcome of this case, and his judgment will stand (pending appeal), but he doesn't have the ability to say "The SSI rule is dumb, we're going to ignore it."

<comment><USER6> yes, but he is the ultimate interpretation of the law. if the law states "secret of states must be out of records" the judge is the one who decides if something is a secret of state or not, right? or can i just say that this chocolate cake recipe should be treated as so and everyone have to comply?

<comment><USER7> Only when that bit of the law is up for judicial review. This case isn't about what does and doesn't constitute SSI, and while the judge may have decided what to admit or not admit as SSI, he would have done so according to the existing rules, and would be bound by those rules to protect that information under the rules that govern the presentation of SSI in court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, a new attack vector for terrorists. Wreak havoc by setting up terror groups using names that are confusingly similar to important organizations. This way, they could deny a lot of scientists and researchers to travel to the USA and therefore these people would have to develop their innovations in foreign countries that still have common sense like Malaysia and Japan and China and Russia.

<comment><USER9> So what you are saying is that all it takes to be a terrorist is to choose the right kind of name for your chess club..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't been following the news on this particular story (shame on me). Is there something that can put this story into context for me? It was fascinating to read but hard to understand without knowing the story.

<comment><USER11> A foreign Stanford student was denied boarding, presumably due to the no fly list. Conjecture is that the root cause is confusion between a terrorist organization "Jemaah Islamiyah Malaysia" and a professional organization "Jamaah Islah Malaysia".

Inability to fly to return to Stanford/Silicon Valley has obviously caused a lot of complications and trouble for her, which can be interpreted as monetary damages, and she has filed suit for compensation, and also to be removed from the no fly list.

A few days ago, the government appears to have prevented her daughter (a U.S. citizen) from flying to America to testify about it. The government claimed in court that they did not prevent her daughter from flying to America with the no fly list, but apparently the airline provided the daughter with a copy of the no fly order. Generally, the airline is instructed not to provide said orders to the traveller, so the traveller has no way to know why they aren't allowed to fly.

This sort of lawsuit is difficult to make - the government has argued it should be dismissed because she can't prove the problem is that she is on the no fly list.

<comment><USER12> I don't see what the government expects. They go out of their way to keep things secret, like with FISA courts and the gag orders on the no-fly list, and then they say "she can't prove it was us" as a defense. Hello? Rule of law?

<comment><USER4> That is exactly what the government expects. It is a catch-22 _(you can 't know that you are on the list (through official channels anyway) unless you sue them into confirming it, and you can't sue them unless you can prove that you are on the list. A seemingly insurmountable circular dependency.)_, and it is by design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was not aware the USA has so many information about every single travel. According to this [1] they record everything.

\- amtrack

\- trains in the EU (including sit numbers)

\- bus travel in the EU

\- plane travel in the EU on a carrier that doesn't fly to the US

\- hotel reservations

\- pedestrian border crossing

Everything.

[1] [http://hasbrouck.org/articles/Hasbrouck- Cato-2APR2013.pdf](http://hasbrouck.org/articles/Hasbrouck-Cato-2APR2013.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> I found the points about Robert Oppenheimer and Nelson Mandela being on terrorism watch lists to make a particularly good argument for their potential flaws.

It makes the need for good Judicial Oversight readily apparent.

</comment><comment><USER15> > a visa is not an entry permit, but merely "permission to approach the border > or port of entry and ask to be let in

Oh God.

<comment><USER16> That's standard policy for every country I know of. That's just how visas work.

When you get to passport control in pretty much any country, they evaluate anything that might be suspicious, look at your passport stamps, ask you for explanations, interview you further... and have complete control to send you back to wherever you came from, and not let you in.

<comment><USER17> It's standard policy, but it was introduced in an age when checking people against a database before they even get on the plane (as the US and many other countries now also do) was not a feasible option.

These days we should be able to pre-clear people accurately enough that passport control at destination should be a formality.

(Also, my country for one does not hassle _their own returning citizens_ at immigration the way the US likes to.)

<comment><USER16> Well, in 99% of cases I think it _is_ a formality -- I've never been turned away from a border before, nor do I know anyone personally who it's happened to. So I don't know what you mean by pre-clearing, or what you want it to gain.

If you're looking for a 100% assurance that, as a foreigner, if you get on the plane, you get let in the country, that's never going to happen, for security reasons. There will always be only some things that only passport control will catch.

I mean, a country's borders are the last chance to turn someone away, so it makes sense that that's where a certain level of scrutiny will apply. And the only people a country is going to trust to do that, is its own passport control workers. That's just a reality.

And as far hassling returning citizens... as an American, I would be horrified if I encounter trouble returning to the US, just tremendously pissed off.

But I can also understand that, with the US probably being the most popular country in the world to want to sneak into, people might be trying to fake their way into the US as supposed citizens, and that determining citizenship and identity at immigration might not always be as straightforward as it might. (But I still think it's horrifying to have to go through computers, phones, text-messages, etc... - I'm not defending that at tall!!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kafka would have been proud of the government's arguements in this trial.

<comment><USER19> Kafka, esq.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there any way for this trial to set a precedent that will lead to the travel situation improving? Because secret no fly orders, secret trials and government saying "yeah don't worry about it, we're policing ourselves, we don't need no judiciary branch" is, well... Reminiscent of other things.

</comment><comment><USER21> How hard was it for Moxie and friends to get clear of their watchlist status?

<comment><USER22> Is Moxie now clear?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We sure seem to live in a fucking police state. I sure hope the judge doesn't get a secret visit in the middle of the night. Denying a US citizen to return to the US, or potentially stripping them of their citizenship despite being born on US soil (read the second part) should scare and/or piss everyone in the US off. If the government decides it has the power to cancel our citizenship at will and this is somehow upheld, we are all screwed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Poor choice of font-size- 11px, really?

<comment><USER25> Most browsers have a minimum font size option, I recommend you try it out.

<comment><USER26> Don't fall back on "well, the browser should prevent bad choices from authors/designers."

<comment><USER27> When it comes to design, there is no such thing as universally bad or universally good.

<comment><USER26> Too small to read is a pretty safe bet for the "not good" category. In fact, there's entire standards around what should guide your design process[1].

[1] [http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility](http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mubi Opens Their Library - <AUTHOR> https://mubi.com/library <comment><USER2> Could you elucidate? I see no open library here

<comment><AUTHOR> It used to be that only a selection of 30 movies where showing at a time. Now they've opened up their library Netflix-style!

<comment><USER2> Oh OK, thanks for the detail!</comment></comment></comment>


BackboneJS ToDo list example with Spring 3.1 (no xml config) and MongoDB - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sdeleuze/spring-backbone-todo

<comment><USER2> This is a great idea . However as a long time Spring user , could I ask that you spin this in to full blown tutorial . Heck I will pay for an ebook (<$15) which shows Client Side Coffeescript + client side MMVC+ some client side templating + client side state with Spring on the server side. Go slow and easy on the client side JS part -- after all you would be talking to Java guys ;-). You don't need to worry about server side xml -- that is natural for us Java guys.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah phew, another framework for making ToDo apps. It needs to be added to the TODOMakerMaker! <https://github.com/mrspeaker/TODOMakerMaker>

<comment><AUTHOR> Backbone is for much more than ToDo apps, this is just the exampe app customized to use Spring 3.1 and MongoDB (here's the original example [http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/examples/todos/inde...](http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/examples/todos/index.html))

For more on Backbone here's the official page <http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry, but What's so special about this ? I work with Spring and can't see why it would be hard to use it with Json and Backbone.JS. Anyone could point me the reason ?

<comment><USER5> For a Java developer, this is interesting since one might not be aware of new js libraries like Backbone.js. Java EE crowd seems to be too much embodied with only Java EE stuff that they should be aware of new stuff like backbone.js. Of course, for someone that frequents HN, backbone is familiar, but in the company I work (a Java EE shop), noone other than me has heard of backbone.js (not even other stuff like node.js)

For a non-Java developer, it might either break the myth that Java EE is too much based on XML, or reinforce it. Spring, JAX-RS, JSF etc. now allow no-XML configuration, and they are not as verbose as they used to; but still it might seem daunting for someone outside (I'm also someone from outside in this respect too, I have been doing Java EE only for the last 3 months, (I had Django/Python experience before) and it has been hard to get to learn all the Java EE technologies by myself (e.g. how many ways are there to do DI in Java EE? Spring, CDI, JSF, with or without XML etc.)

<comment><USER6> So, how are you enjoying your foray into Java EE? I may be making a similar move and would be interested in your thoughts. Things like what version of Java EE are you using, what pain points have you found, do you feel hampered by the java environment, etc.

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> IMHO - I love to work with java, I've used all kinds of JEE frameworks and my favorite setup is Spring 3 + Spring MVC for almost all sites... If I need to work on a form filled web site I would use Vaadin or JSF2 + primefaces + EJB 3.1 (EJB 3.1 which is way better then previous versions).

Java is great and you can be as productive as you want.

Another thing is that the JVM environment is getting richer every year, with more Frameworks and languages.

As I said before, Java is a work horse. My fun coding is now in Javascript and Scala, but to work, for me nothing beats Java and it's stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never understood the intensely nested folder structure of Java apps. See: <http://c.boxd.in/2S3X3n1s0x3d042j2A09>

Or, why is the code at:

        spring-backbone-todo/src/main/java/org/resthub/todo

<comment><USER8> The _src/main/java_ part is a Maven convention: [http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction- to-...](http://maven.apache.org/guides/introduction/introduction-to-the- standard-directory-layout.html)

This project has a "pom.xml" (Maven configuration file) in it's root directory, so it is using Maven. While you could use alternate folder structures with Maven, that requires configuration, whereas if you use the convention, Maven reads these folders by default. So if you also had a src/test/java folder, Maven would know that your unit tests are in that folder, and would automatically run the tests as part of the build.

The _org/resthub/todo_ part maps directly to the Java package (namespace), which would be "org.resthub.todo". As darklajid said, this is a language requirement.

These deep folder structures can be annoying if you are using a regular file browser, but Java IDEs generally flatten out the packages, so that you see all packages all at once in a list, so you don't have to do a lot of expanding of subdirectories.

<comment><USER9> You have to admit having a folder per package level is a bit silly, especially considering so many projects contain empty "org.foo"/"com.bar" folders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> '(no xml config)'

'/pom.xml' in root folder

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit, the title isn't completely descriptive.

No xml config meaning Spring is configured completely by annotations, as described on the GitHub page:

> "XML free Spring MVC 3.1 backend (no web.xml, no applicationContext.xml)"

pom.xml is used by Maven, and every Maven project must have one <https://maven.apache.org/pom.html#What_is_the_POM></comment></comment>


Keeping the team accountable with a daily scrum meeting agenda - <AUTHOR> https://soapboxhq.com/blog/meetings/what-to-include-in-your-scrum-meeting-agenda <comment><USER2> You can do this asynchronously with tools like vlokit.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Curious to hear if people's daily scrum is changing dramatically with everyone being WFH?</comment>