Getting to "Philosophy" - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosophy <comment><USER2> I wrote this several years ago if anyone is interested:

[http://xefer.com/wikipedia](http://xefer.com/wikipedia)

It's not perfect but I enjoyed working on it

<comment><USER3> Your project looks really cool, but it would be great if one could share a link to a query.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I will put that together. Really I should have done that from the start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It reminds me of how, if you ask why something is so, and then keep asking "why?" to every answer you get, you tend to end up asking philosophical questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> A good friend of mine is a student of philosophy, and I often argue with him about the importance and usefulness of the discipline. His favorite metaphor on the matter goes like this: If each domain of science was a finger, philosophy would be the thumb. It's the one that the others should rest upon when being used.

Of course, I always dismiss his metaphor as pie-in-the-sky ridiculous. But I must concede that this phenomenon occurring on Wikipedia gives a lot of weight to his argument.

<comment><USER6> Ask him for contemporary examples of philosophy's usefulness to science. While on the subject, you might want to argue that philosophy has become too self- referential to be relevant.

I don't think the Wikipedia phenomenon means a whole lot. Here's an alternative metaphor: philosophy is the pot we put all the loose ends in, until some advance in science allows us to work on them some more. That doesn't mean philosophy is making progress on them.

<comment><USER7> Here is a contemporary example: [http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self- driving...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self-driving-cars- must-be-programmed-to-kill/)

<comment><USER6> Philosophy is something of a grab-bag of disparate disciplines, and I agree that ethics can often (and should) inform public policy.

<comment><USER8> > Philosophy is something of a grab bag of disparate disciplines

So is science.

Please don't tell me we're going to play that tedious game where we give you lots of examples of philosophy's relevance and your response is just "oh but I didn't mean _that_ kind of philosophy".

<comment><USER6> No, I am actually agreeing that this is a valid example, though it is not really a matter of science. As for all the other examples that you allude to, I will consider them case-by-case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's also fun doing this on Wikidata with "subclass of".

* Go to a Wikidata item, e.g. "sailboat" [1]

* Click on the "subclass of" (P279) value or, if no such value exists, the "instance of" (P31) value

* Follow the "subclass of" chain up to "entity" [2]

You can do the reverse -- i.e. go down the classification tree -- with tools like Wikidata Generic Tree [3].

\---

1\. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1075310](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1075310)

2\. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35120](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q35120)

3\. [http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata- todo/tree.html?q=Q35120&rp...](http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata- todo/tree.html?q=Q35120&rp=279&depth=2&lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER10> Does this only apply to philosophy or do x degrees of separation allow you to substitute any other topic?

<comment><USER11> It's funny you should ask because last night my son and I were looking at the periodic table of elements. He said "boy, I bet you just by clicking on links we could get to pumpkin"; and we did.

Not quite the same but fun nonetheless.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like he might like this: [http://thewikigame.com/6-degrees-of- wikipedia](http://thewikigame.com/6-degrees-of-wikipedia)

<comment><USER13> I've tried it, but it doesn't seem to register me. I'll join a game, it will keep a count of my clicks, I'll find the goal, and then it will say "no win". Then the game will time out and I'll see "no winners in the last game". What's going on here?

Edit: Ah, apparently to win you have to get it in exactly 6 clicks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wish wikipedia was indexed by subject, so that you could download smaller parts of it for online use.

<comment><USER15> Hmm. For a machine-centric view there's the intriguing DBPedia[0].

One of the 'chunking' methods that Wikipedia uses is categories (you undoubtedly knew that) and here is the page that deals with that[1].

Indeed, there's entire category on Wikipedia Categorization[2].

There's the Category Tree page, dead useful, here's one for `semiotics' by way of example[3]

I'd be tickled pink if others could drop more pointers here! Without doubt, as Wikipedia continues to self-organize it is going reveal structural truths about the knowledge humanity is creating.

\---

[0] [http://wiki.dbpedia.org/](http://wiki.dbpedia.org/)

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_categorizat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_categorization)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACategor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACategoryTree&target=semiotics&mode=categories&namespaces=)

<comment><USER9> The Wikidata taxonomy is basically the successor to Wikipedia's category tree. It not only irons out language-based differences (e.g. the category tree being different among Chinese, Spanish, English, etc. Wikipedias), but also captures the idea of generalization through a more semantically meaningful relation. This Wikidata concept tree is constructed with "subclass of" (P279) [1], a property that expresses the proposition "all instances of these items are also instances of those items". The goal is to have a subsumption hierarchy that classifies all human knowledge.

There's an RDF/OWL export of the Wikidata taxonomy available at [2] as wikidata-taxonomy.nt.gz, which can be explored with Semantic Web browsers like Protege [3].

Another fundamental relation -- "part of" (P361) [4] -- expresses mereological relationships. For (oversimplified) example: "iris part of eye", "eye part of head", "head part of body", etc. Both "subclass of" and "part of" are transitive.

A separate comment of mine in this discussion [5] describes how to traverse the "subclass of" tree in the Wikidata UI and a third-party tool called Wikidata Generic Tree. The same principle applies to the "part of" tree. The latter gets less attention, but is also quite interesting.

\---

1\. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P279](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P279)

2\. [http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata- exports/rdf/index.php?cont...](http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata- exports/rdf/index.php?content=dump_download.php&dump=20151012)

3\. [http://protege.stanford.edu/](http://protege.stanford.edu/)

4\. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P361](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P361)

5\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10448573)

<comment><USER15> Superb response. Deeply informative.

I am very excited about the potential knowledge engineering possibilities opened up by this large structured datasets.

I believe that at the very least we're going to have within a generation a machine-generated ontology to rival Kant and Aristotle. Then we'll have to figure out if this tells us more about how we've digitally organized the knowledge we have or whether it does in fact reveal something about reality and being.

Besides 'subclass of' and 'part of' are there any other taxonomic ways for concepts to relate to other concepts? There are parallels here of course with object-oriented-programming. It's funny, I only within the last year or so started reading up on mereology[0] but as soon as one starts thinking about concepts and there relationships one ends up there eventually. 'part of' is like encapsulation. 'subclass of' is like inheritance. Is there more?

[0] (from the Greek μερος, 'part') [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/)

<comment><USER9> Yes, there's also 'instance of' (P31) [1]. Together, 'instance of', 'subclass of' and 'part of' comprise Wikidata's basic membership properties [2].

'Instance of' and 'subclass of' provide Wikidata with a way to express the basic philosophical notion of type-token distinction [3]. For things that are a subclass of something like 'material entity', all instances are physical objects that have a unique location in space and time.

Not all instances are spatiotemporal particulars, though. For example, one might say "Homo sapiens instance of taxon", where taxon is a metaclass, i.e. a class in which the instances are classes. (Here 'taxon' would not be a subclass of 'material entity' \-- i.e. taxa are information artifacts, not physical objects.) Support for this kind of "punning" via metamodeling is a major feature of OWL 2 DL [4].

If this sort of thing interests you, definitely take a look into Wikidata [5]. The project will be a sea change for several key features in Wikipedia (e.g. infoboxes), and will likely be a main hub of the Semantic Web.

\---

1\. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P31](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P31)

2\. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Basic_membership_properti...](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Help:Basic_membership_properties)

3\. [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types- tokens/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/)

4\. [http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/](http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/)

5\. [https://www.wikidata.org](https://www.wikidata.org)

<comment><USER15> Fantastic, I've read through your entire comment history :)

I'm familiar with OWL and RDF. I've been using Sparql and DBPedia, I'll switch to Sparql and Wikidata if you think that's the way to go. How do you see the overlap between DBPedia and Wikidata?

I'm concerned that there's going to be knowledge-grab by corporations and (perhaps) government entities. I fear that the knowledge graphs inside the big G and FB and Yandex and Apple and MS and so on to power their search engines and personal assistants will be orders of magnitude more sophisticated and complex and comprehensive that what will be available to open access research. Witness Freebase. Are my fears misplaced would you say?

I've read that SEP article, I've also read a good bit of Peirce's original journal article. As it says in SEP "It should be mentioned that for Peirce there is actually a trichotomy among types, tokens and tones,[...]" \- I think it's amusing that basically everybody ignores the triadic distinction that Peirce claimed to be the case for a dualistic type/term distinction.

I'm looking forward to going through your tutorial quill in hand and pot of ink at the ready.

<comment><USER9> I think SPARQL and Wikidata are the way to go.

Regarding Wikidata and DBpedia: to my understanding the latter gets much of its content by scraping Wikipedia infoboxes. Wikidata will increasingly provide data for those infoboxes, and thus DBpedia.

Regarding your fears: I don't share them. Wikidata will greatly enhance the accessibility of knowledge for open access research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Choosing the first link is more or less arbitrary for the purposes of this test. Knowing as we do that nearly all articles lead to Philosophy, I'd be interested in knowing the minimum and maximum distances to Philosophy via traversal of _all_ links in an article.

I feel like this may tell us something interesting about the relative "distance" from philosophy a given subject has, but it's also just as likely to not tell us anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting to repeat the analysis for other languages. Do other languages have other attractors? Trying it for Spanish, I seem to get stuck in short loop more often, or in Psicología. I got to Filosofía once, but even that takes me to Psicología. Psicología links you back to itself: Psicología -> Profesión -> Especialización -> Actividad -> Psicología loop.

</comment><comment><USER18> Huh. I woulda thought wikipedia links would lead you to "Hitler" more often than not.

<comment><USER19> The fact that it's the first link is important. The articles reasoning makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems like a very "fragile" fact. Anyone aware of this could easily break it.

<comment><USER21> On the contrary, it's a tautology. There are only a finite number of articles, so either your chain reaches philosophy, it ends because there are no links/broken links, or it gets stuck in a loop. The other possibility is that it never ends but never reaches philosophy, but that means it must loop since there are only finite number of articles.

The interesting thing is two fold: most articles end up in the philosophy case, and the loops that do exist tend to be small.</comment></comment>


Watch a VC use my name to sell a con (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-sell-a-con/# <comment><USER2> Many successful people love what they do. So they work "insane" hours.

For better or worse, these people choose "work" (in quotes because it doesn't feel like work) over watching TV, taking vacations, and spending time with friends.

When outsiders observe people like this, outsiders come to the conclusion that said people are successful because of the long hours. When in fact, they're successful because they're obsessed with making it successful.

In other words, the takeaway should be "do something you love," rather than "work long hours."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation)

<comment><USER3> Being able to do, and get paid to do, something one loves is a luxury that very few people have. ("Do something you love" is actually quite impracticable as advice.) If you happen to love doing something remunerative, bully for you ---but plenty of people have jobs they merely (if they're lucky!) like.

It's also highly questionable that people who are successful are successful because they're obsessed with making it successful. Obsessives and workaholics love to play it as if that's what turns the trick, but it's really just as silly as a sports team attributing its success to having "wanted it more". What, like the other guys didn't want it?

<comment><USER3> ... following up to myself (why not?), it's also important, I think, to resist the fallacious inference from "X loves his job" to "X would be happy to work all hours". It really does not hold up, but it's distressingly common in conversations like this to hear the proviso "well of course if you _love_ your job you'll work the long hours and that's fine", but one could well love one's job and have other interests one also considers worth pursuing. Nothing to excess! (Plus holding the fallacious inference to be sound contributes to its pernicious contrapositive: "if you don't want to work all hours, you must dislike it here".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish more people would read this... the idea that engineers need to work crazy hours is both abusive and wrong.

We should be working less hours; as the mental capacity and focus required to do our jobs well is strictly necessary to do a good job.

Just because someone, somewhere, got rich working stupid hours doesn't mean you will-- if anything you probably won't and why would you want to? Your life just vanished; because you spent it working like a dog for nothing.

While I think DHH (of Rails fame) is often kind of a douche (I am too, so don't take too much offense)-- his, public, views on how to run an office and actually work a start up are vastly better and more realistic for the masses.

<comment><USER5> _I wish more people would read this... the idea that engineers need to work crazy hours is both abusive and wrong._

This is true not just for engineers, but teachers, manufacturing workers, and number of people where the workforce size is suppressed and individuals are stretched to the limit for the benefit of the C suite and the shareholders.

<comment><USER3> Totally agreed.

One not actually unfortunate aspect of the preferability of sane to insane work hours is that a lot of aspects of corporate culture that are much esteemed in startup-land are really basically designed to get you to work insane hours, from undergrad-dorm-esque offices (hey, remember when we pulled all-nighters all the time and it was totally cool?), to employer provision of services since you wouldn't otherwise have time to run errands, to, most mind- bogglingly to me, employer provision of dinner. It really shocks me when I see a company drawing attention to how it provides free evening meals to its employees (or just to its engineering staff or whatever), because why the fuck would I be there at dinner time? And why are you all stretched so thin in the first place? (I mean, at my actual job, I _am_ there at dinner time, on occasion. Which is less than ideal. But at least no one acts as if that's a great state of affairs.) And that doesn't get into the corrosive mindset according to which your job is supposed to be your primary leisure pursuit as well, because you love it so damn much.

<comment><USER6> I remember the time I pulled a punch of all nighters in undergrad. I weakened my immune system and contracted a four-month spell of mono.

It's absolutely a corrosive mindset. It's also one not conducive to learning new tricks or to meaningful thinking– just shallow processing, to paraphrase Nassim Taleb.

Don't get me wrong, I'll be up late tonight. I've got some big things tomorrow that I need to prep for. It happens once in a while.

Sleep's important, but the kind of masochistic bullshit you correctly ID isn't. Or shouldn't be.

<comment><USER7> I had a similar thing happen to me, but still in highschool, where I pulled allnighters to make an insanely stringent schedule work so I could catch up to those pesky A+sians that played the Violin and helped blind orphans speak (or something along those lines).

I mean workwise, I feel better sprinting short burst than to walk for long periods, but trying to take on a 4 year death marathon, starting at 6 in the morning and ending 2 in the evening, wasn't much of a bright idea. I ended up crashing every second term, to get sick weekly during that time and to pull down my hard earned grades into the D range.

I believe that the mind is a lot like muscle in that respect. Don't excercise it, and it will atrophy. Strain it constantly, and it will break down, along with your bodily health. The point to building mental muscle seems to be alternating between periods of excertion and recuperation. Anyone telling you that carrying weights constantly is the path to strenght is proably trying to get you to build their pyramids, pulling stone slabs up an incline day and night.

<comment><USER6> Just saw your very eloquent reply to my comment. Great analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This generated some fantastic responses 2 years ago on HN as well: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3288671>

</comment><comment><USER9> whatever.

for most of us (those launching pure software startups - sorry hardware folks) we now have the benefit of 6c per hour servers and the luxury of avoiding VCs completely.

we can burn 12-18c an hour ($133/month) while we find product market fit with a business model such that adding users adds profit. that's what you are doing right?

if not, then yes, you are falling into the VC trap.

otherwise, you own your culture. think about what you want.

<comment><USER7> Depends on what kind of hardware though. With certain things, you can test a product market fit with some ducttape and a lot of creativity. There's a pretty good book on that called "One simple idea" by Stephen Key, which, whilst it has a focus on licensing such producs out, should come in handy for stress testing a hardware idea. And for the more high tech folks that won't go to the mall to test out whether their stuff will sell, there's still Kickstarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is answer written by Mike Arrington in 2011 after this article - [http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/28/burnouts-vc-cons-and- slave-...](http://uncrunched.com/2011/11/28/burnouts-vc-cons-and-slave-labor- a-marxian-drama/)

<comment><USER11> I think it's interesting that Arrington seems to accidentally agree with Jamie.

> "I've been burned badly by VCs. Treated unfairly. But my response was simply > to stop doing what I was doing and start doing something else."

Isn't that exactly what Jamie is saying? Once what you're doing stops being fun, don't force yourself to keep slogging because you think keeping your nose to the grindstone will make you rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No one at the end of their life ever wishes they had worked more hours.

<comment><USER13> really? what about people who wish they had "done more with [their] life" or "done something more meaningful." I'm sure many people think this. They look back on an easy-going life with a good amount of leisure and wonder what it was all for.

<comment><USER12> I think that "done more with their life" isn't the same as working more hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> depriving yourself from sleep is demonstrably bad for you. i wonder why we reached a consensus that smocking crack, drinking underage and driving fast or without a seatbelt should be forcibly prevented, but driving yourself crazy on adderall to build an app so people can write a blog on their favorite sushi restaurants and VC can prosper is socially rewarded.

</comment><comment><USER15> Out of interest, how many hours do successful startup founders tend to work? Does anyone have a solid view on this, and is there any anecdotal evidence out of YC to suggest any sort of correlation of this kind?

</comment><comment><USER16> This was posted to HN not so long ago; lots of discussion here:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3288671>

<comment><USER17> Appears to be that if you put a "#" at the end of the URL it doesn't get flagged as a repeat.

<comment><USER18> Actually, there's some number of items that are new enough that they're dupes, but after a certain period, they can be resubmitted.

<comment><USER17> Do you know the thinking behind that? (Or what the time length is?)

<comment><USER18> PG commented on it forever ago.

The thinking (if I can speculate) probably is that if an item was submitted that didn't make it to the homepage, but it gets resubmitted a year later and does make it, it's worth everyone seeing it again.

Or, it could just be too annoying for the less-than-part-time maintainers of HN to keep the blacklist past 10,000 items or something.

Speculate on. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Totally agree. I view startup as a marathon rather than short run. The most important thing for an engineer is productivity. I dont think any engineer would be productive after 8 hours of working. If this happens frequently, something's wrong with that company.

<comment><USER20> 100% agreed. And maybe more than 100%. I gave a talk a couple years back on "Building a Sustainable Startup" and said that it was even worse than running a marathon. Doing a startup was like developing a running career.

You can watch the video if you want, but the relevant gist is that I knew people who trained for marathons and really wrecked themselves. They did one, said "never again", and then quit running. Whereas I, a slow fat guy, took my running much more gradually, and now have been running 7 years. I even just did my first triathlon a couple months back.

Video here: <http://vimeo.com/24843552>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> IMHO it's not about just putting in hours. It's about believing in what you strive to acomplish, so that you can make concious choices about which tasks are useful or not. Once you have a clear goal, go ahead and put in the hours if you want, but never continue when the goal gets fuzzy. I guess I'm saying that you primarily have to work conciously and goal-directed. The really hard work part is secondary, but also probably quite necessary given the size and complexity of most projects.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any particular reason you are reposting this today?

</comment><comment><USER23> Arrington is considered a VC now? Yikes.

<comment><USER24> According to Wikipedia's article: "In 2011, Arrington founded a venture capital firm called CrunchFund along with M.G. Siegler and Patrick Gallaghar."

It seems to me that being a partner at a venture capital firm makes someone a VC. Why do you think otherwise?

BTW, from CNN: "CrunchFund itself has largely flown-under the radar. It doesn't even have a website."

<comment><USER25> Heh, "under the radar" is an interesting way of looking at it.

They might not make a lot of noise now, but CrunchFund was the trigger for several days of utter and very public chaos at AOL/TechCrunch when it launched, leading to Arrington being fired because of AOL's own choices and disclaimer of journalistic ethics, but not really, but oh maybe really, but no, but yes, but now he's back, and AOL still doesn't know WTF they're doing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you turn off stylesheets, you can even read the text.

<comment><USER27> Sigh... This meme of criticizing UX instead of the article is getting old on HN.

Email jwz your suggestions. Also have you seen his homepage? <http://www.jwz.org/> OMG, it's like... So horrible hurts my eyes, god who would care about what jwz says with that design!

<comment><USER28> Real hackers care about typography, design, and UX.

On HN you're not a real hacker until even your tweets have a colophon.

<comment><USER29> Thanks, I just entertained myself for several minutes imagining jwz's reaction to being told he's "not a real hacker on HN"!

<comment><USER28> Well, he only ever uses Macs nowadays, so he's _almost_ there :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix and Level 3 Only Telling Half The Story - <AUTHOR> http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/03/netflix-level-3-telling-half-story-wont-detail-changes-want-net-neutrality.html

<comment><USER2> I suspect the story is even more complicated that many people think.

For example, this article is comparing Netflix to Google, in terms of how they are delivering content. It implies that because Google has (apparently) figured out how to serve content (and videos) to Comcast customers, that Netflix must be doing something wrong because they can't (or won't) do the same thing.

Well, here's the thing... if a Comcast customer can't access Google, then "the Internet is broken", and that customer is likely to call Comcast customer service. Which costs Comcast money.

Plus, Google provides a lot of services that don't directly compete with Comcast's own offerings. I don't think anyone would consider Youtube to be a suitable replacement for watching TV.

However, Netflix is competing directly with one of Comcast's major offerings (regular TV and video-on-demand too). In fact, that's really all they do. So Comcast doesn't have much financial incentive to help Netflix, and a lot of incentives not to.

Ditto all of that for Yahoo and the other major sites. The only one that might also be in this boat is Amazon. But if people can't shop on Amazon, that is almost another "the Internet is broken" situation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted this because frankly I don't understand the issues well enough and was hoping a few people in the community who understand networking and infrastructure better could respond to the points raised in this article.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is a great resource for understanding the argument.

> Level 3 thinks Cogent should have to pay them, because the balance of > traffic isn't equal, but Level 3 doesn't think it should have to pay > Comcast, even though that traffic is also lopsided. Confused yet?

Someone seems to be. He's confusing a peering arrangement between two tier 1 providers with a dispute between a tier 1 and an ISP. The tier 1 providers have other ways of routing around each other, but there's only one way to get the bits a comcast-owned person requested to them: through comcast.

<comment><USER4> > The tier 1 providers have other ways of routing around each other, but > there's only one way to get the bits a comcast-owned person requested to > them: through comcast.

TL;DR Last-mile providers can extort anyone with bits to deliver. Who else as a consumer are you going to use?</comment></comment></comment>


Personalized movie recommendations based on your unique taste - <AUTHOR> https://www.taste.io?ref=hm <comment><AUTHOR> [Update] 6 months ago, we asked for your help at the infancy of this project and got some great feedback. Per your suggestion, we refined the algorithm and made the following data viz improvements:

— Streaming on Netflix in your country

— What to watch with another friend

— Visualize movie recommendations by year/genre

— Cool graphs for your personal movie stats

— Dynamic charts for movie attributes (plot, theme, pace, rewatchability, etc)</comment>


Now You Can Travel Back & Forth Through Time on Google Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/video-now-you-can-travel-back-forth-through-time-on-google-earth.php

<comment><USER2> I've realized that I've watched too much Dr. Who, but proper time travel should let you go to the future -- no?</comment>


Use-state-methods: all the power of useReducer without the ceremony of actions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pelotom/use-state-methods <comment><AUTHOR> `useReducer` is the most powerful core building block for state management in React 16.8, but its API is more complicated than it needs to be. `use-state- methods` offers a simpler alternative with no loss of expressiveness. Think in terms of "methods" which either mutate state or return a new state. No dispatching actions, no giant switch statements to handle them, and with free callback memoization.</comment>


CNO neutrinos from the Sun are finally detected - <AUTHOR> https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/after-nearly-a-century-elusive-cno-neutrinos-are-finally-seen-from-the-sun <comment><USER2> The article mentions that the sun produces 10^25 neutrinos every second. This felt quite off.

I found an Ohio State PDF that mentioned 2 * 10^38 neutrinos per second. Elsewhere I saw mentioned 7 * 10^10 particles going through your thumb every second (1 cm^2). Times that by cm^2 surface area of sphere that is radius of distance between sun and earth (3 * 10^27), and the 10^38 looks like the correct one.

Interestingly, I also saw mentioned a nuclear reactor makes 10^20 neutrinos per second.

EDIT: Not sure why the downvote. Because I didn't link sources?

Here's the powerpoint presentation: [http://www.physics.ohio- state.edu/~hughes/freshman_seminar/p...](http://www.physics.ohio- state.edu/~hughes/freshman_seminar/press/minos_new#:~:text=From%20the%20process%20of%20thermonuclear,2x1038%20per%20second%20total.&text=A%20standard%20nuclear%20power%20plant,energy%20is%20around%204%20MeV)

Here is Fermi lab saying number per second in thumbnail: [https://neutrinos.fnal.gov/sources/solar- neutrinos/](https://neutrinos.fnal.gov/sources/solar-neutrinos/)

Here's someone's homework that gives the calculation total neutrinos per second based on number of He fusion reactions, which also matches 10^38. [http://www.as.utexas.edu/astronomy/education/fall08/lacy/sec...](http://www.as.utexas.edu/astronomy/education/fall08/lacy/secure/hw5.pdf)

Sorry... not many great sources here but everything points to the 10^38 number. The 10^25 stated in the article may be mistakenly using the very similar number for joules of energy created each second by the sun (10^25).

<comment><USER3> _The 10^25 stated in the article may be mistakenly using the very similar number for joules of energy created each second by the sun (10^25)._

Could they also be using a number for a specific type of neutrino?

<comment><USER2> That Fermi's lab link says all the neutrinos produced by the sun are of the same type, electron neutrinos.

<comment><USER4> Parent comment possibly meant "10^25 neutrinos with an energy level indicating they were produced by the CNO process".

<comment><USER3> After reading the article it seems they were referring to total neutrinos, so I think the OP's correction stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone once told me that CNO fusion doesn't happen in our star because it is too small. I think he would be happy to be proven wrong.

If the CNO process is allegedly more efficient, does that mean a star with a higher mass might live longer than a smaller one that mainly use proton-proton fusion? Or is it even worse for the lifetime of a star?

<comment><USER6> CNO fusion does happen but at a fraction of the rate of pp fusion at the core temperature of the Sun. CNO fusion is more efficient in the sense that it is much more strongly temperature dependent. For pp fusion, the rate goes with T^4, but for CNO it is T^20.

See eg. [https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~glatz/astr_112/lectures/notes...](https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~glatz/astr_112/lectures/notes8.pdf) for a more detailed explanation.

<comment><USER7> You seem to know a lot about this stuff. I have a question for you.

If fusion creates the potential for fission (radioactive waste) and radioactive waste can be used to build atomic bombs, how have we not figured out how to make mini perpetual-energy reactors?

<comment><USER8> Both fission and fusion release net energy by having products with greater binding energy. The greatest binding energy is iron (and some surrounding elements). Once you get there, no more energy can be released by fusion (or fission).

See this graph: [https://opentextbc.ca/universityphysicsv3openstax/wp- content...](https://opentextbc.ca/universityphysicsv3openstax/wp- content/uploads/sites/273/2019/07/CNX_UPhysics_43_02_BindingEng-1.jpg)

So it's not a perpetual motion machine. Iron is the bottom.

(Heavier stuff than iron can be created by fusion, but that absorbs energy instead of releasing it. Supernova create these heavier-than-iron elements like Uranium and gold endothermically... they're also created by the decaying guts of neutron stars—which are essentially ginormous atomic nuclei held together by gravity instead of nuclear forces—when they collide and some of their guts are released into space.)

<comment><USER9> The S-Process creates elements with atomic numbers higher than Iron, and it does not rely on supernovas or neutron star dissolution.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-process)

<comment><USER10> S-process is still endothermic, though, right?

I'm not sure if endothermic is the best word. IANAP. It seems to usually be used when discussing fusion-based neutron generation. But AFAICT neutron generation, especially as it relates to the s-process, is still largely a thermal process--the greater the temperature, the more neutrons are generated, the faster the s-process evolves. (If you go back to the beginning of the universe all nuclear synthesis represents an endothermic process, right? Though, maybe such semantic games aren't particularly helpful when distinguishing nuclear synthesis processes.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> IANAPhysicist, but the article makes "feel" how cool all of that is. Good read.

<comment><USER12> The author has a series on youtube where he explains the basics of astronomy in a very passionate manner. First episode here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rHUDWjR5gg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rHUDWjR5gg)

<comment><USER13> Wow, I'm exhausted for this guy. The way this is edited is just bad. The guy needs to take a breath. They started the audio from the next edit before the guy has fully completed his current sentence. It's like they had a hard constraint on how long the video could be, and cut out all of the silence to make it fit.

<comment><USER14> I like it. It's like listening to a podcast at 1.2x, you can always rewind it if you miss something but the general pace works.

<comment><USER15> My podcast app setting is up to 1.7 now. Listening to normal speed spoken word audio (e.g. on the radio) seems like a brain injury.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I did not spot what fraction of the sun's output is CNO. Is it known?

Also, what process makes the original C-12? Assuming very little of it started out there. Or does the primordial C, N, and O just circulate?

<comment><USER17> Roughly 1% of the Sun's output is from the CNO cycle.

The original C12 came from the triple alpha process. Three helium atoms collide to form C12 more-or-less directly. Technically, two helium atoms combine to form Be8, which combines with a third helium atom to form C12, but the half-life of Be8 is 8e-17 seconds.

There was no C12 anywhere in the universe until the first stars began dying. Only after the first generation of stars lived their entire lives, and off- gassed C12 (and other heavy elements) and the next generation of stars formed from the remnants did any stars exist with C12 in them, or planetary disks form around them that contained any elements heavier than lithium.

This had fairly significant effects. First of all, the first generation of stars (called Population III stars) could not burn hydrogen via the CNO cycle, which can happen much more rapidly than the proton proton chain. Second, they were much more transparent. Combined, this means that they were much, _much_ less constrained in terms of mass than contemporary stars. They could have been enormous. They could have been large enough that it was energetic enough in their cores that the highest energy gamma rays might preferentially form positron-electron pairs- that was a lower energy state than just being plain old light. This would reduce the temperature in the core, which would cause it to contract. As it contracted, it would heat up again- which would cause more electron position pair production.

Normally, fusion in the core of a star is self regulating. As it heats up, it expands, which reduces the rate of fusion. This causes it to cool down, which causes it to shrink. This increases the rate of production. This process stable and self regulating.

However, pair-production throws a wrench in all this. Higher temperatures are short circuited into pair-production, which causes it to shrink, which increases the rate of fusion, which increased the rate of pair production, which causes it to shrink more. It's a feedback loop that creates a very small, very very _very_ hot core. And the core collapses. But this doesn't collapse into a black hole or anything, it shrinks until the point where the density of positrons is so great that they annihilate as fast as they are being created. At this point, the feedback loop breaks, and the entire star explodes in an impossibly powerful supernova. There's no warning and no remnant; it's a normal (albeit very large and very bright) star one moment, a ridiculous supernova the next, and nothing but an expanding gas cloud containing a wide variety of heavy elements the next.

We have never observed a Population III star, or a pair-production supernova. Just hypothesized about them. It's odd that we've never seen a population III star- why isn't there a small red dwarf kicking around (which can easily have a lifetime of a trillion years) with no elements heavier than helium in it? (lithium is destroyed fairly quickly in a star) We think that this tells us something about star formation; there basically had to have been _no_ small stars in the early universe, just very large ones. It's an open question as to why.

You might imagine a planet with life on it who are quite annoyed by this. They're minding their own business, when suddenly their star explodes and they're all dead. But this couldn't have happened. Remember there's no elements heavier than lithium at this point, and only a minuscule quantity of lithium at that. There wasn't enough "stuff" in the star's disk to form planets, and if a small chunk of lithium/lithium hydride managed to coalesce into a planetoid like object, there's not really any chemistry interesting enough to form life that can happen.

<comment><USER16> > " _There was no C12 anywhere in the universe..._ "

... outside of the stellar cores manufacturing it.

Fascinating, I had never encountered this. Stellar core all electron-positron pairs, momentarily.

So we get all the elements heavier than iron from these insane-o-novas and from ordinary supernovas, often by decay from even heavier isotopes. Do we know how much of each is from which? E.g., did all the platinum or something start from pop iii output?

<comment><USER17> > > There was no C12 anywhere in the universe until the first stars began > dying.

> ... outside of the stellar cores manufacturing it.

Stellar cores do not produce C12 unless they've already started dying. If there is hydrogen in the core, it will fuse that into helium instead of fusing helium into C12. It's not just a question of "it does happen, just super rarely" either- stars will have an inert helium core surrounded by an expanding shell of hydrogen burning for quite some time before the helium is actually able to begin burning. In the case of the Sun, it's expected to enter the red giant phase, where it burns hydrogen around its inert helium core for 1.2 billion years before it begins burning helium into C12.

> So we get all the elements heavier than iron from these insane-o-novas and > from ordinary supernovas, often by decay from even heavier isotopes. Do we > know how much of each is from which? E.g., did all the platinum or something > start from pop iii output?

We have a few models of sources of elements heavier than iron. Supernova are the primary source of almost everything from oxygen up to rubidium.

Once a star goes from its red dwarf stage, where it's still burning hydrogen, into its asymptotic giant branch stage, there is a thin, very hot layer around the helium core, with a dense neutron flux. Heavy elements here will absorb stray neutrons and slowly grow up to elements as heavy as lead. This accounts for many of the elements heavier than rubidium.

The rest of the elements heavier than rubidium are the result of merging neutron stars. See here for more info: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis#Key_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis#Key_reactions)

Unrelated fun fact: for stars between about 0.5 and 2 times the mass of the Sun, nearly all of the helium burning happens all at once, in the space of a few minutes. For those brief moments, most of the energy generation in that star's galaxy is happening in that star; that star is more powerful than all the other energy sources in its galaxy combined. This is called helium flash. Surprisingly, this doesn't explode the star, all that energy is absorbed by the outer layers. Stars heavier than 2 times the mass of the Sun do not undergo helium flash, as they are heavy and massive enough to begin burning helium earlier and in a non-runaway fashion.

<comment><USER16> No much new to me!

Hmm, the Chinese say that helium flash also produces a great deal of lithium.

<comment><USER16> *So much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article has helped me understand this XKCD comic -[https://xkcd.com/2340/](https://xkcd.com/2340/) which I was too lazy to look up.

<comment><USER19> Your comment made me read the article. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How do we distinguish CNO neutrinos from those produced by proton-proton fusion?

<comment><USER21> According to the article, they have a different amount of energy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is the metallicity of the sun so low when they are so high for the planets?

<comment><USER16> Which planets? The big ones are mostly H2. The small fry with weak gravity lose theirs.

<comment><USER22> There is new data from the Juno Mission, that Jupiter has a diluted core.

"...heavy elements (elements other than hydrogen and helium) are distributed within a region extending to nearly half of Jupiter's radius."

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1470-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1470-2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd point out that OP posted a link to a science fiction site

<comment><USER24> Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy is a legit science blog (man, the term feels so quaint in 2020...) - even though it is hosted in a shady-looking syfy.com website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The linked XKCD article on "Lethal Neutrinos" is great [https://what- if.xkcd.com/73/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/)

<comment><USER25> I don't recall if this happened or not but it feels like a Star Trek plotline for them to be near a star when it explodes, have some drama about keeping the shields up and then at the end of the day everyone goes home safely.

But the TLDR here is that the radiation flux from only the neutrinos is enough to kill at 1 astronomical unit from an exploding supernova. Maybe whatever ridiculous process that lets them block phasers but is transparent to visible light and sensor arrays also blocks neutrinos.

The problem with scifi is that each person has a certain proportion of bullshit they are willing to ignore, and at some point it's just too much.

<comment><USER26> >The problem with scifi is that each person has a certain proportion of bullshit they are willing to ignore, and at some point it's just too much.

Nobody watches Star Trek for the science. Which is ironic given that it's apparently inspired a lot of scientists.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love Star Trek, but I personally find the engineering practices of the Federation appalling. And, of course, the technobabble is an annoying and lazy subterfuge to avoid proper research when writing a script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ahh too bad we don't have to go to Thalassa then (Songs of distant earth, Arthur C Clarke)</comment>


Ask HN: I need career advice - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently finishing up my last year of pharmacy school and could really use some advice on what to do next.  I initially started my education with the intention of returning home to work for my dad, who owns/operates a rather successful business (revenue = low 8 figures). However, throughout the last 6 years of school I have become increasingly enamored with tech, and have started to toy with the idea of trying to join a startup in the spring. I worked in sales to put myself through school, and am pretty confident I could handle a biz dev role at a healthcare related startup.
To complicate matters, it looks like an opportunity may present itself to open a new pharmacy almost immediately after graduation (unique situation - would be guaranteed yearly revenue of $20m+). I feel like it would be incredibly dumb to pass up this opportunity, but I am a bit wary about moving home immediately without trying other things, as I don't want to have regrets 15 years down the line (when packing up and uprooting a family won't really be an option).
If anyone can shed some light on my decision I would really appreciate it. I've been mulling it over for a couple months now and really can't seem to come to a consensus. <comment><USER2> Opening a new pharmacy is a really nice opportunity. You get to see how things work at the moment; you get an idea of what a traditional business is like. You get to see the good things, but more importantly you get to see what sucks. That's great experience.

Also - it's a lot of money. If you lived frugally you'd be able to save a lot of cash, and that's always useful. You never know when you'll need it,or what you'll need it for. But having a nice lump sum does make getting more money easier, and it makes startups easier.

Packing up and moving is always possible. For sure, there are unpleasant things about it. Children lose touch with school friends, spouses have to change jobs, etc. But it's possible, and people do it all the time and they're not damaged by it.

TL;DR - Do the pharmacy thing; Take note about good stuff and suckage, make sure to learn from it; save lots of cash; have lots of ideas and do lots of research; use cash and research for new fun stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a no brainer. Go home and work for your dad, learn some business chops and earn money.

After a few years you'll have earned some strong managerial skills and have accumulated a nice financial buffer to do whatever startup you want.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm going to contradict everyone who's yet replied (5 at the time of writing) because I sense the reason you posted here is because you feel a bit guilty about wanting to jack it all in and jump into technology.

You'll be under a lot of pressure to accept that offer and people will tell you not to do it, but somewhere in your heart there is something saying "I made a mistake doing pharmacy, I should have done CS".

Firstly there are no mistakes in education. I studied art and design, and worked in advertising for 7 years before a learnt a single line of code. I've been in tech ever since.

One regret? Nah. If I hadn't done design there's no way I could reverse engineer any piece of art/digital image just by looking at it. I learnt skills that tech people pay others for.

What I'm trying to say, is that you can do it anyway you want, but somewhere at some time in some place you are going to wish you could code. You'll know it'll put you in a place the competition can't touch, and you'll be glad you did it.

If you're worried about stability, take the job. If you're young enough to pick up the pieces and start over when it doesn't go your way, then jump ship.

They don't just say "fail fast" for a gimmick. It's all about that in tech. You'll know soon enough if it was the right choice for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hard to understand exactly how my emotions play into this, but I don't think I am particularly concerned about "wasting" my education. My main concern is maximizing my abilities AND my background. If that means I'm best served by doing something completely unrelated to pharmacy, that's fine. However, I tend to think that I can capitalize on the degree/licensure and add more value than if I abandon my background entirely. One of the reasons I initially went into pharmacy was because there seemed to be so much opportunity to improve the process, and so few people interested in doing so. Now that I've experienced a little bit more in life, the prospect of spending my entire life in a pharmacy doesn't seem nearly as interesting as working at a startup. Am I just caught up in the perceived glamour of working in SV, or is this a worthwhile concern?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can't you combine both? Open your own pharmacy, and after a little while explore the idea of your own health/pharma-related startup? I'm sure that you'll find something in the pharmacy that you can vastly improve with tech. By the time you figured it our, you saved enough money to tinker with it AND you'll have quite some experience in running your own business. I can't think of a better way to get involved in your own startup!

</comment><comment><USER6> Here is my take on the situation.

At the end of the day everyone wants to be happy. Some people are lucky enough to be happy without money. Others are happy after they get the money, but that is only because of the freedom granted to those with money.

I promise you will regret not earning lots of money while you are young. You are in a great position. You have no debt (that you told us about)and you stand to take up a really great job. If you even only put in 10 years in that really good job you will have bought your freedom in some way. Then you can do whatever you want and your family will be fine. I suggest taking that path...and who knows, your tech enthusiasm could just be a phase. We've all had them...who didn't want to be an astronaut?

</comment><comment><USER7> Uh, with that kind of money coming in, you could save it and do whatever the hell you want later on, no? It's enough money that you could probably invest in tech startups to stay close to that environment.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, I would not be a majority owner in the pharmacy. I would be paid salary (low 6 figures) + equity in the realm of 5%. The main benefit would be the experience of opening a business from scratch with low risk, a decent salary, and a little equity.</comment></comment>


Tesla's $35k Model 3 Sedan to Start Production in 2 Years - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/02/teslas-35000-model-3-sedan-goes-into-production-in-two-years-preorders-start-next-march/ <comment><USER2> Just enough advance notice to help would-be buyers time their leasing and trade-in behavior.

<comment><USER3> Except that Tesla is notorious for not meeting deadlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, this is a tried-and-true technique used to damage competition. I have personally been the subject of such attacks in a prior tech business when our product started to threaten that of one particular multinational.

What did they do? They had sales people go to every single dealer to communicate they were going to show a next-generation product at the next major trade-show. This was six months away.

What happened? Anyone who was on the fence and could wait, decided to wait. We had a major order (about $2.5 million in product) go on what I call "soft hold" because of this. Soft hold is when your customer waffles around instead of pulling the trigger. They want to hedge their bet, so they keep you in the loop and dangle a big order while they think it through or wait for an alternative.

It is hard to say how much money we lost through such a simple technique. Hardware products are very different from software. You have to preload supply pipelines and fill warehouses with components, assemblies and finished product. Your purchasing has to be predictive (a nice to way to say "you have to get good at reading crystal balls"). In some cases you have to make purchasing decisions 10, 12 or 16 weeks before you can ship any product.

As a small company with just a dozen people or so the tsunami they created really hurt us financially. This multinational's marketing budget in our niche was probably larger than our annual revenue. Which meant they could play all kinds of games.

Our product was very good but heavily funded FUD and dirty tactics served to delay revenue and cause financial damage.

Six months later they brought this "next generation" product to the main industry trade show. Of course, people trusted a well-known brand. And they placed orders. Our orders tanked. Some got cancelled. We lost tons of money. We survived, but it was very rough.

We knew their product wasn't good but customers didn't want to believe this. Delivery timeline was something like six months. Which meant we were denied sales and revenue for at least a year.

As product started to ship and now customers started to use it in the wild the reviews came in: The product was crap. Not good. Not usable. Overpriced. Not worth it. In other words, exactly what we told our customers a year earlier.

The problem at that point we had suffered so much financial damage that we simply could not spin things back up. And, to boot, this was at a time when money had dried up, which means there was no way to find a loan or an investor to get us healthy again to make a run for the market.

The end result was that this company played the market masterfully with a bullshit product, future promises and bad delivery yet succeeded to destroy it's main competitor. I think it was another year before they actually delivered a product people wanted. We were done. They won. Lesson learned.

I can't say with any degree of certainty Tesla is playing a similar game but announcing something that is two years away with a reservation date just a few months from now sure brings back painful memories.

Cars are a displacement market. This means that when someone buys a car that buyer is, generally speaking, no-longer in the market for another car. Whoever sold them that car effectively displaced that opportunity away from any other seller.

Promising something two years away and locking people in with a deposit is most-definitely a displacement move of the first order. That person will not buy another car and will wait two years to get their pre-order. Which means Tesla pre-displaces, BMW, Toyota, Audi and anyone else who might have a $35K-ish car in two years.

Brilliant, if you can pull it of.

Slimy? Sure. Business is war.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for the insight. I have noticed they have a habit of making big announcements very early and even if they end up being late a lot of the time, they continue this practice. So it must be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> It's interesting that a $35K price point even makes sense for a car that could conceivably be designed to last 400K miles.

<comment><USER3> 400 miles? Even Tesla's Model S doesn't go anyway close to that under normal driving conditions. Model 3 will get 200+ miles, at best maybe around 250 for the top model.

Edit: Yeah missed the k. Never heard that one brought up. Also doubt Tesla's will last much longer.

<comment><USER6> I think you missed the "K" at the end of the "400" in the post you replied to. The part I'm wondering about is why the Tesla could "conceivably" go 400K. A modern diesel could go 400K, but a Tesla will suffer the same problems the diesel would with rotting body panels and interior, and a whole host of problems not related to the drivetrain.

<comment><USER7> I have no idea what makes a diesel die. Can you give me details on diesel death and what the other problems not related to the drivetrain that one would expect are.

<comment><USER6> > I have no idea what makes a diesel die.

Mechanical wear, the rings don't seal as well against the cylinder walls as they used to. Valves don't sit in their seats as tightly as when new. And so on. As for other problems, I already listed a few. Think of the niggly things your last old car had. A Tesla, diesel, or any other car is not immune to those problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> With pre-orders to open in March!

</comment><comment><USER9> This title is horrendous. It's missing the most important piece of information, which is '...Production in 2 Years...'.

</comment><comment><USER10> > "Tesla's $35,000 Model 3 Sedan Goes into Production, Preorders Next March"

Yikes, very misleading title - the Model X is currently going into production, not the Model 3.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, >Model 3, our smaller and lower cost sedan will start production in about 2 years. -- Elon Musk

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Pre-orders". This isn't a Kickstarter. Why should customers finance a billion-dollar business? Tesla can borrow at better rates than individuals.

<comment><USER13> Unit commitment. Anyone can make a free reservation. Serious buyers put $5K up. It gives you better signals about what your production pipeline is going to look like.

EDIT: If you can't fork over the $5K, you probably should wait in line to get your Model 3 after priority orders are delivered.

<comment><USER14> Can you fork over 35K to get in front of the 5k plebs?

<comment><USER13> They _might_ have a Signature deposit offering, where the 3 comes fully loaded in return for you fronting most of the vehicle cost upfront. This hasn't been announced yet to my knowledge, but was done for both the S and the X.

Sidenote: If you can't afford a $5K deposit for a vehicle, you probably shouldn't be buying a vehicle new.

<comment><USER14> How about putting up the money for the entire run to resell it at a markup to all the people who were willing to put 5K down? Surely they can afford more than 35K if they can let 5K sit around for the opportunity to pay another 30K to get the car when it is actually produced?

Would that get me to the front of the line?

<comment><USER13> Deposits are non-transferable. If you want to venture down some whacky scam to get around that, I'm sure you could try.

<comment><USER14> Ah, I mistook your first post as saying you could jump to the front in a previous offering. It seems you were only saying that you might be able to purchase from the more expensive pool.

Please accept my apologies.

<comment><USER13> No need to apologize whatsoever! I apologize if my tone came off as abrasive or combative.

<comment><USER14> Nope, not at all. I just didn't want to be ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was sort of hoping the brand would stay in the elite space and not make an everyman's car. A 35k electric car is cool, but I like the wow factor that Tesla currently has. Like saying "I bought a Porsche" and it turns out to be a Boxster, not a 911.

EDIT: I'm not saying this is a bad strategy for Tesla - it's great for them, I'm saying it makes it less valuable to me, one lone consumer since a Tesla will become less and less of a status symbol. That's it.

<comment><USER16> I'm positive a 35k electric car made by tesla will not disappoint. 35k is quite a bit of money

<comment><USER17> Especially when much less of that money is going into a battery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like a great car but not sure it belongs to the future. I think the future is mostly in rented car services à la Uber/Lyft, most people live in big cities where the cost of owning a car is getting closer to just taking a cab, not to mention the hassle. And this will accelerate once self driving cars become more common. So yeah, buying cars especially $35k ones doesn't seem like a business I'd invest in but I may be totally wrong here. The battery part of it is great though.

<comment><USER13> "Listen To Elon Musk's Awkward Silence After A Question About Tesla's Self- Driving Fleet"

[http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/06/listen-to-elon-musks- awkwar...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/06/listen-to-elon-musks-awkward- silence-after-a-question-about-teslas-self-driving-fleet/)

TL;DR Based on Elon's response, they're considering released an Uber competitor with their own self-driving electric cars.

EDIT: Uber has an app and drivers. Tesla is going to have enough manufacturing capacity to build 100K cars/year. Numbers I've found indicate that 90-95% of the time, cars are in a garage or parked. That's a lot of idle capacity society doesn't need out there.

What does that mean? Tesla doesn't need to churn out enough cars to replace existing cars being sold; they just need enough that can replace current _miles_ traveled by people.

<comment><USER19> Demand for cars is still huge during rush hours. Lots of cars sit idle during low demand times, but that capacity is still needed to meet high demand times.

The problem isn't getting people into the same car. The bigger problem is getting people into the same car at the same time. Sure, self-driving cars can work with each other in ways human drivers can't to minimize congestion, but until you start removing cars from the road, it will still be an issue.

<comment><USER20> Uber Pool and Lyft Line are already paving the way for car sharing along popular commutes. In the future, you will face the option of a ride home in a self-driving car either alone for $15, or with two other passengers for $5. The decision will be pretty easy for most people.

<comment><USER13> Or Google Now will simply suggest people in your area you could commute with, based on its aggregation of your daily commute data with the data of others, based on the time you leave every day.

Or perhaps Google Maps will do that. It supports Uber internally as a travel option, no? Wouldn't it be interesting if that dropped away and was replaced with Google's self-driving car scheme one night?

<comment><USER20> Excellent point. The actual service providing this transportation shouldn't matter. Passengers just want to arrive at their destination. Let the system figure out how to get them there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cubelets: modular, affordable robotics for kids and students - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/cubelets.ars <comment><USER2> for those interested, union square's bug labs [1] is very similar but insanely more expensive. likely a very different audience. the cubelets are $300 for 20 blocks, whereas the bug labs starter kit is $1500, for 7 modules and the base.

i've wanted a bug kit for a while but couldn't justify the price, the cubelets look awesome and $300 for 20 of them seems completely fair. looks like fun.

of course, hardware and robotics are absolutely not my forte, so i might be making an awful comparison.

<http://www.buglabs.net></comment>


New person on the block  - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/jenson.vaj?sk=info Live in Fresno, California. Two and a half hours away from Silicon Valley. <comment><USER2> This sort of thing should go in the "about" section of your profile instead. (Click on your username.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I guess I just want to start by saying hi. That I am new to this forum.

<comment><USER3> Welcome!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would one become a web developer for NASA? asking for a friend - <AUTHOR> How would one go about asking to be a web developer for NASA? Does my friend need a science degree? <comment><USER2> They have a career page on their website.</comment>


Show HN: Fantasy Football Weekly Waiver Wire Player Evaluation Tool and Heatmap - <AUTHOR> http://www.fantasyalerter.com/waiver-wire?utm_source=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Find out how strong a waiver wire pick is this week relative to past weeks based on the number of times a player has been added.</comment>


Incomplete List of Mistakes in the Design of CSS - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.csswg.org/ideas/mistakes <comment><USER2> They forgot to add that centre is consistently misspelt as "center" and colour as "color".</comment>


Ask HN: What are your thoughts on Empathic Civilization's feasibility? - <AUTHOR>

If you are not familiar, here is a good intro to the idea and the book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g
I can't talk to most people I know about it because they believe the world will end in 2012 and there is no point in even thinking about the future of life on Earth and how we need to change to make it work.
I was hoping for an engaging HN discussion on how consciousness has evolved over the past few ages of man and where it is headed next. Maybe we can all learn something and apple it to our work. <comment><USER2> Slightly negative. First, language differences continue to be a barrier to understanding, and this won't go away in a generation or even over several; it's naive to generalize from the internal dynamics of a country to the world at large.

Second, even when people have a language and communication medium in common, the existence of flamewars, shows that it doesn't necessarily result in people listening to each other more closely.

You might this an interesting read - written by a game designer, but easy to extend to other net contexts: <http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm></comment>


Show HN: A podcast for socialist techies - <AUTHOR> http://generalintellectunit.net/e/001-podcast-of-the-cybernetic-marxists/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all. I've just started publishing a new podcast, analysing the intersection of Technology, Politics and Philosophy, from an unapologetically far-left perspective.

You can find us on iTunes ([https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/general- intellect-unit/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/general-intellect- unit/id1304361213)), Soundcloud.com ([https://soundcloud.com/giunitpod](https://soundcloud.com/giunitpod)) and most likely on whatever podcast app you prefer to use.</comment>


Why is the media suppressing information on Hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness? - <AUTHOR> https://usagag.com/why-is-the-media-suppressing-information-about-hydroxychloroquines-effectiveness-against-covid-19/ <comment><USER2> 51 studies show good results. How many show bad results?

Drs in Brazil gave large doses... of what size???

Veterans with preexisting conditions, ok, so if it doesn't do any good for people with preexisting conditions, then what good is it?? This kind of selective BS is incredibly bad, always and especially right now!

</comment><comment><USER3> You probably need to find a less politicized source or the discussion will just decompose along political lines. It probably will anyway, but if the article is somehow more neutral, at least there's a chance.

</comment><comment><USER4> The media is not suppressing information on hydroxycloroquine's effectiveness (specifically for COVID). I read this article and it looks like right wing propaganda, not scientifically factual information.

I think one of the problems is that non-experts (in human biomedicine) don't have the education to read and evaluate a collection of medical studies and sift the BS from the quality.</comment>


Check in to Facebook Places from your inPulse watch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getinpulse.com/checkin-to-facebook-places-from-your-watch

<comment><USER2> Full disclosure: I am an iPhone developer.

It may not look like it on the surface, but this application, in a small way, is the sort of thing that seriously puts nails in the iPhone's coffin.

When I first heard about the InPulse I wondered how it could possibly work with the iPhone and as it turns out it can't, at least not without jailbreaking it, therefore rendering this sort of application "naughty" if not impossible.

As the novelty of the phone itself wears out the ability to integrate with other devices and use the hardware in new and innovative ways will be severely crippled on Apple's platforms due to the severe limits put on legitimate developers.

I'm excited to see that there is room for this sort of thing on other platforms and I can't wait to see other projects which exploit it.

<comment><USER3> Disclosure: I know the inPulse guys and I am an iPhone developer. Also the inPulse guys are awesome.

Any hardware manufacturer that wants to integrate with the iPhone needs a special $1 chip and a licensing agreement with apple. Mostly because you are going to use their product names and Made For iPhone graphics. From those I have talked to in this program, its very painless and simple, and gets you extra functionality in terms of backgrounding since the user expects it and obviously trusts the hardware device they purchased. The problem is that this chip makes it incompatible with other phones. (see wakemate as an example).

Apple is not against innovation, and it bothers me when people say that. The correct statement is that they are about control. I use a hackintosh and many apple products. I like that i can do anything with my mac, but my iphone has some limits in place that make sure (if it wasn't on at&t) it will always work as a phone. I had many windows mobile phones and even an android that were buggy or had too much cool extra software that prevented the phone software from working reliably. Consumers get a choice. When it comes to my pocket, I choose apple's infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> A product developer also has to pay ~$5 per device Apple licensing fee

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't get me wrong, the inPulse watch is pretty neat, but doesn't it seem like it should have more than one button if it doesn't have a touchscreen?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Posterous is acting really slow. This link should be quicker: <http://www.getinpulse.com/apps/fbcheckin/>

</comment><comment><USER6> So people are voluntarily buying and putting tracking devices on their wrists to update Mark Zuckerberg with their location in real time?

<comment><USER7> Who said Big Brother had to be the government, or that it had to be involuntary?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: OK to restart an app abandoned by it's founders? - <AUTHOR> An app I thought was a great idea shut down more than 3 years ago.
I recently had the idea to bring it back, and found the domain was available, so I bought it.
I also found the trademark marked ABANDONED/DEAD.
The company raised a small round of funding, and was popular for about a year in certain Twitter circles.
It likely has some brand recognition among those in the startup crowd.
I've tried to reach the founders and others on the original team multiple times via multiple methods, to no response.
I'd prefer to get their consent - but interested to hear whether you think it'd be OK to just go ahead and reopen the site? <comment><USER2> I think this is lawyer consultation time.

My biggest concern would be that if it has brand recognition there is value there and if there is value ... it is likely that someone might feel they still own it, and maybe only after you get some success.

I like the idea of asking but asking the right person might be more of a confusing thing depending on whomever was involved in the past endeavor. Someone might ok it... but are they the right someone?

</comment><comment><USER3> Talk to a lawyer. Trademarks do not _have_ to be registered, at least not in the USA.

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

 _"Common law trademark rights are acquired automatically when a business uses a name or logo in commerce, and are enforceable in state courts. Marks registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office are given a higher degree of protection in federal courts than unregistered marks"_

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely, it has not been used it a very long time - but I'll check with someone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You're probably over-valuing the brand recognition from the name. The headache and time wasted dealing with it is likely more than the value gained by using that time to make the product better.

</comment><comment><USER5> Having recently been through an unexpected (and successful) trademark negotiation with a large international computer company, I'd say it's easier to get forgiveness than permission. Even if you get a cease and desist, a lawyer (we use Trademarkia) can negotiate a settlement. We got permission to keep using the mark and we didn't have to pay the other company anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll keep that in mind

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Literally from googling, _so_ not legal advice:

[https://www.upcounsel.com/abandoned- trademark](https://www.upcounsel.com/abandoned-trademark)

A dead trademark is not always available for use or registration by someone else because the original registrant might still be using it, and thus retain common law trademark rights. Search the USPTO website to learn why the trademark was abandoned. You might be able to acquire the trademark depending on the circumstances of its abandonment.

Before using an abandoned trademark, speak to a trademark and branding attorney and find out why the application was abandoned.

You must clear the rights before using the mark.

If the mark has been abandoned for three to five years, most likely you're safe. But beware that a non-active mark in the USPTO database could still be in use by the original owner. Even if you prove that the original owner has no intention of using it again, you still risk legal problems.

Make sure to also check all countries where the mark was used.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why don't you use another name to avoid confusion?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a great/perfect name for what it is, and I really enjoyed their branding. Also it's basically the same idea - but that is definitely something I'm considering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My take on it would be it's definitely OK to revive if it's going to be FOSS. Just like how VC replaced TC, even though the developers didn't intend for that to happen.

This is from a moral, not a legal perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's VC/TC?

<comment><USER9> VeraCrypt / TrueCrypt

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All this aside, maybe it's not a good idea after all. What makes you think your version is going to work any better than the original?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's something I'd like to exist - and I have ideas on things to improve :D

I'm also be ok with building a bootstrapped business, whereas the original founders took the VC route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would reach them to offer my time and propose to partner, even if I could deal with the tech part of the project on my own.

</comment><comment><USER12> If the trademark is abandoned it seems like there will be nothing legally stopping you from doing it.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do we have a black bar today? - <AUTHOR> Just wondering. <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12201810)</comment>


An implausibly illustrated introduction to HTML5 Web Workers - <AUTHOR> http://wearehugh.com/public/2010/08/html5-web-workers/ <comment><USER2> I don't really care for threaded Javascript in the browser, but damn can that dude illustrate a point! Cool!

[Edit] Ooooh, it's Mark Pilgrim, of course! Great stuff!

<comment><USER3> You might also enjoy: [http://wearehugh.com/public/2010/08/html5-video- accessibilit...](http://wearehugh.com/public/2010/08/html5-video- accessibility/)

<comment><USER4> > Standards suck. It's just that everything else sucks more.

Made me smile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really don't count Chrome Frame as "works in IE." When you say, "works in IE", it has to mean, "works in the standard install of IE." Because that is the case that most people care about. We deal with IE primarily because we can't convince corporate clients to install _anything_. If I could get them to install Google Chrome Frame, I'd get them to install Google Chrome, period.

<comment><USER6> I (the author) would agree with this statement, except for the baffling fact that Google Chrome Frame has a non-zero number of users. So obviously _some_ people thought "I don't want a new browser, but I'd be OK with installing this plugin."

<comment><USER7> Strangely enough this was the sentiment at Google. I was talking to a Googler in a recent GTUG meeting and they told me exactly that: Some people won't change browsers but they are OK with installing a plugin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds great, but if all you're going is sending an AJAX request in the worker and stuffing the response into some element, I don't see much benefit. Most of the time you use an event handler to deal with the response so you're not blocking the main thread anyway. However, if there is any computation, DOM walking, or markup generation, I would definitely use a worker for that.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help the 60% of my users who really need it: the IE users with slow JS engines. I've measured 1-2 order of magnitude differences in performance between IE and Firefox/Chrome/Safari in my codebase, and there's just not much I can do for the IE users without withdrawing functionality I'm required to give them. (I wish Chrome Frame was an option, but I suspect that if they had the ability to use that, they'd have the ability to change browsers too, and they don't.)

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell What are some use cases for worker threads? Initially I thought there must be loads, but when I considered that XHR is asynchronous anyway, and that Worker threads don't have access to the DOM...

I guess it would be good if you wanted to use your visitors CPU in the background for password cracking or for the various distributed network stuff like SETI.

But what practical benefits do web workers provide for normal web development?

</comment><comment><USER9> Web Workers don't work on iOS do they? At least my iPad doesn't seem to support it - ran into this issue using Web Workers on my project

<comment><USER10> God I hope not. I really don't want webpages serving up multithreaded JavaScript on anything with fewer than two cores.

Say what you like about Flash, it always confines its evil to a single core.

<comment><USER11> Which is a real pain when you're trying to develop a responsive Flex application. (Something I have to do at work, not because I want to.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Suddenly, the Safari Extension model makes a _lot_ more sense.

</comment><comment><USER13> what's not clear from this is scope. Does each worker have its own namespace?

<comment> mike-cardwell This should be trivial to test...?

<comment><USER13> true, but I was at work when I wrote that and was wondering if anyone else out there had a quick answer for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Sanity of threads + robustness of web development.

What could possibly go wrong?"

Genius!

<comment><USER15> This has absolutely nothing to do with threads, though, does it? It's messaging, plain and simple.

Presumably the browsers will implement it using threads, but they could just as well pass the messages off to another PC for all your JavaScript can tell.

<comment><USER14> Imho It's very analogous to tread in the sense that its very dangerous for programmers that are clueless.

And have you ever interviewed for a Js opening where 100% of them knew the most basic implications of events?

That will be fun

<comment><USER15> JavaScript in general is very dangerous for programmers who are clueless...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't really understand how's this different from events.

> and your web app still assumes that my browser can only do one thing at a > time

Um, no it doesn't. What makes you say that?

<comment><USER17> In the browser, all DOM events and timers are executed in the main thread along with the html parser, dom layout and rendering, css parsing etc. So if the javascript handling an event takes too long it will block everything else and hence UI responsiveness suffers. With web workers, browser starts a real seperate thread, that will not interrupt the main page thread, hence responsiveness doesn's suffer because of long javascript execution.

<comment><USER13> I've got into the (probably bad) habit of using setTimeout(returnMethod,1) as a means of overcoming this. It's especially useful for long scripts that fire in the body onLoad event

<comment><USER18> This works, but the immediate danger I see is that the user can be interacting and triggering other events while you are still acting on the original request. Results will vary from "that's better for them" to "insanity!" depending on what you are doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here is a short write up I did for my company blog after attending the now famous HTML5:The Future Of The Web mini conference.

[http://blog.mediaplex.com/2010/06/02/html5-why-you- should%C2...](http://blog.mediaplex.com/2010/06/02/html5-why-you- should%C2%A0care/)

<comment> mike-cardwell Content-less article, irrelevant to the discussion. Pure spam.

<comment><USER19> "mike",

There is no need to insult my writing. The original post was about HTML 5 and so was my write up.</comment></comment></comment>


Startups Should Be the Purview of the Psychology Department - <AUTHOR> https://inputcoffee.com/startups-should-be-the-purview-of-the-psychology-department-ae690e1e354f#.21nw2hwvn <comment><USER2> Summary: Lean startups are the scientific method on humans, and that is what psychology departments teach.

Alternate headline: Hackers, Hustlers... and Shrinks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Shrinks imply the old Freudian style of psychologist. This is about _cognitive_ psychology.</comment></comment>


Why digital license plates are a great idea - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20008394-71.html

<comment><USER2> Article summary: "I like shiny things that move, and classic license plates are the opposite of that!"

This is such a bad idea on so many levels, a few of which have been discussed the last time this story (though not this exact link) was posted: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1450930>

<comment><AUTHOR> Article summary: "I like shiny things that move, and classic license plates are the opposite of that!⸮"

I had to fix that for you. That right there is the Sarcasm Mark.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Irony_punctua...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Irony_punctuation)

Because it is often difficult to identify satire nowadays.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I write a website that uses the Facebook API or whatever? - <AUTHOR>

I want to write a toy app that isn't actually a "Facebook app" (which I have never done, by the way). I want it to be a standalone website with its own URL but users log in with FB and it uses their data.
I need to learn the Facebook API or whatever, obviously
However, I am out of the web dev loop. I need someone to tell me what's what. What is jQuery? Am I... Node.js? Sinatra? Ruby on Rails? Which of this is important to me?
I can do like HTML and CSS.
WHAT DO I DO? <comment><USER2> i don't mean to be pessimistic, but I think you have a bit to learn before you get into Facebook login functionality. If your skillset is HTML and CSS, then you should start learning how to make a basic web app without a database. Personally, I'd check out Sinatra or PHP. Rails can be overwhelming to start with. First, get a basic app to send some data to a browser, then do some stuff, then look at connecting a database to it.

To phrase this as a metaphor, you're asking how to install lightning rods for a tower you're about to build, but all you've ever done is paint a house.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've made basic webapps with Scalatra and Scala by keeping all the complexity in the Scala, which I know quite well

<comment><USER2> That's a good start, I may dive into database driven apps now. I know its a swarm of technologies. Don't worry about JavaScript or jQuery right now since those are front-end tools that add icing to the cake (unless it's node.js, but let's keep it simple).

<comment><USER2> Databases generally fall into 2 classes: NoSQL and SQL. I'd stick with SQL based databases such as MySQL, Postgre, and SQLite. For the most part, they can be interchangeable. MongoDB falls into the former and is an entirely different way of thinking about databases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _WHAT DO I DO?_

Read all of this: <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web/></comment>


Show HN: In-Browser APK Bundle Analyzer - <AUTHOR> https://apkanalyzer.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is similar to the APK Analyzer that is part of Android Studio, but runs in the browser. I built this primarily because I want this functionality to another product, but I think it might be useful for people not developing with Android Studio.</comment>


The joys and drawbacks of being able to work from anywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950378 <comment><USER2> Great article. I do all my work entirely from home and up until this point I couldn't pinpoint precisely what was missing. The article uses an excellent phase I was trying to articulate: "casual serendipity". Effectively, this is about casually describing your work to random people and finding serendipitous connections to other projects or learning unexpected, but relevant information.

<comment><USER3> > Effectively, this is about casually describing your work to random people > and finding serendipitous connections to other projects or learning > unexpected, but relevant information.

I work at home, but I find that IRC is a fine outlet for this. There is a much bigger pool of people to draw from when you're talking about a worldwide network as opposed to a few people in your office.

The real problem is that when you work at home, it's very easy to go for days (or weeks) without talking to anyone in real life. It's not bad in general (communicating on the Internet is not that different from communicating face to face), but it is difficult to meet girls :) (To be fair, it was like that when I worked at a big company too. I'm 22, everyone else was in their 40s. I would rather be alone than to have to talk to those people :)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if US culture's attitude towards introverts is going to change now that we're starting to be the new entrepreneur. I think it's been biased towards extroverts because people consider extroversion to be necessary for making the US great, i.e. cowboys. Not that cowboys were all that extroverted anyways.

<comment><USER4> Are most of the entrepreneurs here not introverts? I remember seeing a personality type question, and quite a few were Is of one sort or another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel strongly that "virtual" startups dramatically increase your chances of failure. You need everybody in the same place, bouncing ideas around and sharing the workload. And many people simply don't have the discipline to work a full-time day without being surrounded by peers. I am one of them--I thrive on the shared energy and, without it, my interest fades and I get distracted.

<comment><USER6> I think you may have a point with this for startups where each employee is a huge contributor and innovation is required. But if you have a large company with multiple corporate levels it may not be that horrific to let a few employees work from home. If they are spending more time with their family they may be happier and more motivated to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One really intelligent thing is his rule forbidding more than two people to share office space. Oftentimes, I've noticed that the telecommuters often suffer at the hands of their in-office colleagues, due to that whole insider/outsider problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> In terms of insider/outsider politics, the key factor is developing trust, collaboration and accountability from the start</comment>