Humans evolved to be cooperative breeders - <AUTHOR> https://www.sapiens.org/culture/milk-sharing/ <comment><USER2> This is remotely tangentially related but when I learned that the milk in one milk carton was composed of many hundreds of cows and not just one cow it blew my mind as a child.

<comment><USER3> This is common for many industrial ag products and part of why it's safety is harder. The safety of multiple containers of milk are the worst of the set of individual cows. So you have the incidence of one sick cow leveraged out to many more consumers than if it were 1:1

Another similar case is ground beef[1] where a hamburger patty can contain material from >100 cows

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/05/there...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/05/there- are-a-lot-more-cows-in-a-single-hamburger-than-you-realize/)

<comment><USER4> Regarding milk: at least around here, the milk get tested rather thoroughly, both on composition, bacteria content and taste.

Also all modern dairies pasteurize all milk meant for consumption, which means the bacteria in it are dead anyway.

Source: grew up on a farm, studied agriculture.

<comment><USER3> Of course, totally agree there are processes in place to mitigate the leverage points. It just points out the necessity for such mitigations to be in place due to the multiplicative nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a paper, summarized here at Harvard Medical Review, that suggests there there may be some risks for some of the mothers in this milk-sharing group.

> At six months of age, the analysis revealed that 20 metabolites differed in > overweight versus lean women. Additionally, milk adenine in obese mothers > was associated with greater weight gain in infants.

[https://hms.harvard.edu/news/breast-milk- obesity](https://hms.harvard.edu/news/breast-milk-obesity)

</comment><comment><USER6> The title is for a different article. It should be "What Milk-Sharing Communities Reveal".

<comment><USER7> Actually it's a sentence within the article. There's no article on sapiens.org with this title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's interesting about how connected cross-feeding mothers feel to the other kids in their sharing community. I wonder if this could be used to build life-long stronger bonds in communities.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does the lady in picture shown breast feeding two kids holding a beer? I think it might be harmful to consume alcohol while breastfeeding but more strange is the choice of picture for the article.

<comment><USER10> It looks like it might be a Dundee Summer Shandy - not a bad choice for a hot day at the park in upstate NY.

It is not considered harmful to have a beer while breastfeeding. I'm sure the subject of the photo was aware of how it would be perceived and didn't put her drink out of frame to help normalize public breastfeeding.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Please review my startup too :) - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidedesi.com/

<comment><USER2> I like the design.

I had absolutely no idea what the site was about when I visited. I scanned the page for about 20 seconds trying to figure it out. (Why doesn't it tell me somewhere what it's about?) I only got a clue when I looked-up at my browser's title bar when I was trying to leave the site in confusion.

Good luck!</comment>


This Is How to Respond When Your Boss Asks You to Do Something Unethical - <AUTHOR> https://lifehacker.com/this-is-how-to-respond-when-your-boss-asks-you-to-do-so-1796676630 <comment><AUTHOR> I was forced to "resign" a full-time job with very good benefits at a big name top 10 university for not rushing unreviewed changes driven by a vendor to the security of a credit-card processing network. Standing up for principles has a non-zero cost, and it is unlikely anyone will stand with you, more often the wagons will circle against you for doing the right thing because it's more convenient for HR. It doesn't matter if you're right, how good of a job you do or how many hours you put in: if you don't go along with illegal, immoral and unethical behavior, you're gone. You're disposable and there's little recourse.</comment>


Sony release tool for analyzing and modifying Android apks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sonyericssondev/ApkAnalyser/wiki

<comment><USER2> The blog post (with screenshots) about this:

[http://developer.sonymobile.com/wp/2012/04/13/powerful- tool-...](http://developer.sonymobile.com/wp/2012/04/13/powerful-tool-to- analyse-your-apks-now-released-open-source/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds pretty cool. Did anyone tried this already?</comment>


Orbital vs. Suborbital Space Tourism – why are some space dreams so suboptimal? - <AUTHOR> https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/49559158658/ <comment><USER2> I want to drive around the Moon at such a speed that I can keep ahead of its rotation and be in light the whole way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the interesting idea! The numbers are not as exciting as one might expect: the Moon has a diameter of 3480km, therefore it has a circumference of 11000km that one would have to cover in 28 days. That's only 400km per Earth day, meaning an average of 16,6 km/h.

<comment><USER2> You will probably want to sleep or take a break.

I also don't know how far out of your way you may need to go to get around terrain. Some areas are fairly flat, but there could be mountains, canyons, and other structures that might take some effort to go around.</comment></comment></comment>


Paul Buchheit: Equity math for startups (sometimes 0.1% equals $138 million) - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/equity-math-for-startups.html <comment><USER2> This is one of the better posts I've seen on the topic..If you want to dive in deeper Brad Feld's blog series on term sheets. Another good read is: <http://www.fenwick.com/VC_Terms.htm.> It covers nice things like liquidation preferences, rachet clauses and other things that will make your head spin!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good page. The link is broken though (YC news picked up the period). Here it is again: <http://www.fenwick.com/VC_Terms.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great lesson. A small piece of something big is worth less than a large piece of nothing!

Now, what are the odds that there is gonna be another IPO this decade so that 0.1% of the pre-IPO stock ends up being worth $100mm+? And what are the odds that you'll be the part of it? :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Very nice blog posting. Its amazing how such a low percent can equal that amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great post. Thanks paul!

</comment><comment><USER6> Great writing paul!

</comment><comment><USER7> Very informative!</comment>


Web 2.0/Social Media: Really guys, it's pretty simple  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/06/web_20social_media_really_guys.html

<comment><USER2> Yes it is.

Remember the playground in school where all the snotty kids and the jocks and the bullies shunned you as a geek?

Remember the Internet you built in spite of them?

Well, they've come to take it away from you.

Sleep tight.</comment>


Comcast CEO justifies data caps - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/the-more-bits-you-use-the-more-you-pay-comcast-ceo-explains-data-caps/ <comment><AUTHOR> They should also provide the same fixed size pipe to everyone if they want to charge by total bits transmitted.</comment>


I seem to be writing a web-app framework. Any advice? - <AUTHOR>

I didn't mean to do it - I really didn't! I'm using Hunchentoot and CL-WHO to create a fairly simple web app that has to handle file uploads, file management, a simple database, user logins and the like. I had to modify a bunch of utility functions from previous projects and write a few new ones. They're almost general enough to be used in any web app and it quickly became obvious that I should modify them so they are and extract them to a library. Here are some general features:<p>- Not opinionated - this isn't Rails. Not every web-app consists of creating, maintaining and displaying lists. Users should be free to structure their apps however is most appropriate.<p>- Nested component architecture - pages are made from re-usable components, which can contain other components. A component should contain the data-structures, logic and presentation details for given type of operation. This is a bit ad-hoc right now, but my attempt to write about it has convinced me to formalize it.<p>- Modular - the various  parts of the framework will talk to each other in clearly-defined ways, so they can be replaced when they're not appropriate.<p>Do any of the things I've mentioned sound like especially good ideas or bad mistakes? What kinds of features would you like to see in a framework? What kinds of misfeatures would you like to never see again? <comment><USER2> _"... What kinds of features would you like to see in a framework? ..."_

explain to me how you intend to let users get to the data? Not pages but raw data (xml, rss, microformats etc). Oh that and _cool-uri's_. URI's created in a lot of frameworks suck. How are you going to create cool uri's? ~ <http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI>

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, it doesn't create URIs - you write the dispatch table yourself (like web.py). I might keep it that way, or I might make them optional attributes of components (not all components will have URIs, some might use more than one).

As for raw data, right now, I'm only outputting HTML, but JSON, XML and RSS are on my to-do list. Making a component that spits out something other than HTML won't require anything special.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wait until you write the second webapp, and see which bits of the first one you really do reuse without modification?

<comment><AUTHOR> This post is based on my experiences writing my fourth web app with this tool set. I've found quite a few bits that I reuse with little modification. Noticing this is what made me realize I was unintentionally writing an almost- framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nested components sounds like Weblocks, <http://common-lisp.net/project/cl- weblocks/>, but I'm guessing you're already aware of it.

I just started working on a site using Hunchentoot and CL-WHO as well, send me a note if you're interested in collaborating.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware of it, and I've been meaning to try it out. I may drop my project if I like Weblocks enough. Note sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zak, that sounds vague. So I don't understand what you've done. And Rails can be much flexible. What are benefits from your framework for a particular types of web apps?

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you seen UCW?</comment>


Words Matter – Moving Beyond "Meritocracy" - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/inclusion/2018/10/02/words-matter-moving-beyond-meritocracy/ <comment><USER3> _I personally long for a word that conveys a person's ability to demonstrate competence and expertise and commitment separate from_

We have a word for that: "meritocracy". The fact that we may have failed to achieve this fully doesn't mean we should throw out the word.

By the Mozilla logic, we should also throw out "democracy" because our government(s) have failed to include all stakeholders; throw out "feminism" because a few of them have demonstrated that they're anti-male rather than pro-female; "education" because we've so badly failed to properly educate our youth (and adults!).

Really, pretty much everything we've set as a goal for ourselves, we've failed to achieve in its entirety: such is the nature of goals. But those lapses are just further goals for us to cover. Throwing up our hands and changing the goal posts, or at least how we reference the goal posts, isn't going to get us any closer to them, and seems more likely to confuse the issue, taking us at least somewhat farther away.

<comment><USER4> The OP specifically addresses that issue.

"Sometimes good words and good aspirations get tarnished with history, and need to be set aside"

...and...

"Sadly, "meritocracy" is not that word. Maybe it once was, or could have been. But not today."

Like it or not, words have more than etymological meaning. They also have historical and cultural meaning, that might be sharply at odds with their etymology, and that precludes their use even in situations where they're technically accurate. "Meritocracy" has become such a word. Like "traditional American values" and "celebration of European culture" as synonyms for racism, "meritocracy" has become a rallying cry for opposition to diversity, inclusion, and egalitarianism. All as the person who originally coined the word meant it, BTW. We can coin new words that are just as etymologically valid without the cultural baggage.

<comment><USER5> We're not allowed to talk about celebrating European culture anymore?

<comment><USER6> What the hell is European culture? German culture, Italian culture, Romanian culture, sure. But...?

<comment><USER5> You just said what it is? I mean, what is Hispanic culture if not Mexican/Spanish/Venezuelan/etc., what the hell is Asian culture if not Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc.

<comment><USER6> I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "celebrate Asian culture". Precisely because it's a barely meaningful agglomeration. Now if we examine the context in which "European culture" is celebrated... hm, yes I see.

<comment><USER7> I have heard it. There are just generic Asian American society functions, which celebrate the melting pot of everyone who isn't strictly first generation and has multiple ethnic backgrounds.

<comment><USER8> That would be Asian American culture then, except Americans tend to not notice that their culture is not everywhere and needs qualification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a place where developers who disagree with this type of political movement can gather? I _do_ believe in meritocracy, I believe on the internet no one knows you're a dog and I believe in judging people based on their code contribution alone. I also have very little interest in letting non-tech interlopers into projects.

Where do I go?

<comment><USER10> It seems to me that by rejecting the idea that merit is important, these projects will decay and devolve into irrelevance. The problem is that even the Linux kernel itself has been infected with this memetic cancer.

I would suggest it's time to re-read "1984", because real life is rushing towards imitating it, and it's not just the government. Newspeak and doublethink are rapidly infecting many corporations.

<comment><USER11> Linux has a meritocracy of patches not people, Reddit was the great meritocracy, unfortunately Reddit played the game and Linus didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think meritocracy isn't really desirable if you think more closely about it. Still, this is ridiculous.

Mozilla has done some fantastic work in shaping the internet like it is today, but this doesn't really bode well for the future.

On the contrary, I would think words like "diversity" and "inclusivity", since their politicization, shoulder a lot more subtext directly excluding certain political views.

An constructive environment doesn't need to check it's language. Maybe appeal to the conscience of the community. Worked pretty great in my opinion.

disclaimer: Only contributed tiny bits to OSS, but I believe this to be false:

> open source projects tend to have less diversity than other software > organizations.

I also think that there isn't any real discrimination based on the idea or the word meritocracy. Ironically, although there is not much merit to meritocracy, there seems to be even less with inclusiveness and diversity.

<comment><USER13> > but I believe this to be false:

>> open source projects tend to have less diversity than other software organizations.

You won't find some high school student or a stay at home mom have real impact in corporate software projects, but that's not the type of diversity that's measured these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was interested what wrong could be perpetrated here. The key reason given is,

> The notion of "meritocracy" can often obscure bias and can help perpetuate a > dominant culture.

The link at Atlantic is dead at the moment but it's on wayback[0]. Atlantic asserts that you can't use performance as an objective metric because, in practice, when all other things equal, they are still observing discrimination.

I don't know what to think any more. I would like an objective measurement but I don't know if the data support it.

0: [https://web.archive.org/web/20181004050116/https://www.theat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181004050116/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/meritocracy/418074/)

<comment><USER15> The metrics are bad. And since the metrics are believed to be good, they further entrench winners.

It's like a ML algo. You take all people who have been put in prison, how long, and their faces. You also take a big subset of non-prison people - <USER2> thing. (You know where this is going). You build a classifier that, for a given face, estimates yes/no for prison and how long if yes.

Lo and behold, you show it darker face images, and prison estimation ratchets up and the estimated time served up up up.

Is the ML racist? Technically, yes. But it's observing racist underlying societal things.

Yeah, it's ugly. No, I don't have good answers, other than directly addressing when we catch stuff. But We (royal) don't see it as a problem. The status quo changes slowly.

<comment><USER16> I think the key observation is that metrics (of employee performance) are _always_ bad. And thus it makes sense to compensate for that by taking into account other factors.

<comment><USER8> Using metrics as goals is a key feature of bureaucracy.

In meritocracy, direct results should matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems like a good time to recommend people read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago)

<comment><USER18> As I haven't read it, can you explain the connection and why you recommend it?

<comment><USER4> I would hazard a guess that the connection is how the Gulag was supposedly a punishment for the least meritorious (criminals) but in fact the inmates often possessed great merit and it was the guards/administrators who lacked any, because the definition and application of "merit" in Soviet society had become so twisted. But that's just a guess. More elucidation from the GP would be appreciated.

<comment><USER18> Ah, I can see that as a possibility. Thanks.

<comment><USER17> That's actually not the reason at all.

Given the current climate of tension in the English speaking world, I'm not going to comment publicly anymore on this issue. If you are genuinely intellectually curious as to my opinion, I'm happy to discuss it privately via email.

<comment><USER18> I don't see your email in your profile?

<comment><USER17> That's odd. Try hn [at] $my_username [dot] com.

<comment><USER19> If you only have it listed under "email," only you and the mods can see it. You have to list it in the "about" section to be publicly visible.

This is a common misunderstanding on the site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a shame, as disagreeing that this type of publicity stunt will actually help diversity and equality means to some type of people that you are against equality..

In any case, it did inspire me to delete the Firefox app from my phone as another symbolic stunt.

</comment><comment><USER21> Shouldn't be better if we made meritocracy still valid and fight with biased opinions and decisions? Statements claiming that meritocracy induces biased behaviour will result in a huge backlash :(

</comment><comment><USER22> Why though? Is this some kind of political stunt? I can basically guarantee this will increase the usage of the word meritocracy across the internet. So.. good job Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER23> I hope Google rejects meritocracy harder and faster than Mozilla, so we can continue to have a competitive open-source browser not built by an advertising and tracking company.

</comment><comment><USER24> > I personally long for a word that conveys a person's ability to demonstrate > competence and expertise and commitment separate from job title

Totally.

> or college degree

Absolutely.

> or management hierarchy

This one's less clear. On the one hand, obviously a toxic work environment can ruin anyone's performance, and accounting for that is important. On the other hand, most work has to happen in some kind of work environment, and to some extent we all have to learn how to work well with people around us. That's an important skill for any job.

</comment><comment><USER25> Actual title of article: "Words Matter – Moving Beyond 'Meritocracy'"

More descriptive title, taken from the article text: "Mozilla has taken steps to discontinue using the word meritocracy as a way to describe governance and leadership structures."

</comment><comment><USER4> I've started using "ferretocracy" to describe what actually exists in most places where "meritocracy" gets thrown around a lot. The idea of letting people succeed or fail according to merit instead of position is laudable, but (as crankylinuxuser already pointed out) the measurement of merit is problematic. A true meritocracy can only exist when the metrics for merit are both the right metrics and accurately measured, with all involved able and willing to keep it so. That's a bit like communism's reliance on altruism or laissez-faire capitalism's reliance on honesty. Things never work out that way. In reality, weasels always find ways to game the system. They exploit every flaw in how merit is defined or measured, who gets to define it, who is aided and who is isolated in their respective quests for merit, etc. Ultimately, the pursuit of "merit" veers off target. Focus on pure technical merit has to be balanced with consideration of other kinds, and with goals (e.g. diversity) that are not necessarily merit-maximizing.

<comment><USER8> You can guard against the metrics being inaccurate by calibration and anchoring. And also verification. (and watch the watchers too)

It is obviously an active process, much like guarding democracy against demagoguery.

Attempts to subvert the system can usually be spotted early.

A person designing right secondary metrics that result in good primary endpoints is also meritorious.

The usual problems are either complacency, where meritorious people stop being so and are not being degraded, stagnation - lack of further development of merit or unnecessarily high barriers of entry.

Merit when developed should accrue over time, yet it should be possible for a "nobody" to get in at high levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good! Meritocracy is a fake idea used to justify giving power to those who are already powerful, and the word was invented in order to satirize the idea[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology)

<comment><USER27> The only time I ever hear it is from SJWs talking about how we shouldn't value open source contributors on their merit, but we should instead somehow ascertain their race and treat them differently according to it.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, how dare we promote people based on whether or not they are good at what they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Leaving aside the culture war third rail topics, the idea of meritocracy is on ethically shaky ground anyway.

People who are highly intelligent and motivated already reap the largest share of the rewards in society. Why do we have to go further than that and say that these people "deserve" more? A person who is born with low IQ or low conscientiousness (or both) "deserves less"? At least in a society where rewards are distributed somewhat randomly there is a chance for everyone to have a share. With a meritocracy, no such chance exists, since rewards are then determined by immutable aspects of a person's brain.

Maybe if we could build a society where decision-making was separate from reward, we could have a just meritocracy. But right now, as it is, those who make the decisions use their power to grant themselves all the rewards.

<comment><USER29> So you're saying that reward should be separated from the decision? If I make a shit decision regarding architecture on my current project which drag down the entire thing, I should receive the same amount of praise as if I had taken the best possible decision?

Or you could remove all possible reward, just so that there's no more incentive to do anything.

<comment><USER28> _Or you could remove all possible reward, just so that there 's no more incentive to do anything._

In a society where merit is rewarded perfectly, there's no incentive to do anything for all those who lack merit (i.e. the bottom 99%).

<comment><USER30> I mean, I think we're talking about developing good software, not whether the unwashed masses can live a decent life.

Regardless, merit != absolute perfection. Most people are bad at lots of things and good enough at one or two.

<comment><USER28> It doesn't have to be absolute perfection, it just has to be a system whereby someone who is a little bit better than you gets to replace you. That is, selection is based on monotonically increasing merit.

People at the bottom of such an arrangement have no incentive at all to participate in society.

You can argue that such an arrangement isn't realistic, that in real life you get to keep your job because you've made relationships with your coworkers. But then, that's not a meritocracy anymore, since nepotism/cronyism has taken the place of merit.

<comment><USER30> I'd argue in the tech industry at least you get to keep your job because you have very specific domain knowledge and are not easily replaceable without a lot risk and lost time, even if there are people who are theoretically better in some general way.

I think your definition of meritocracy is needlessly binary. People don't get assigned a merit number where they get to instantly supersede anyone with a lower one like sorting a list. What most people consider the word to mean is if you do good work you will be rewarded as such (more important role, more money etc.), not some king-of-the hill winner take all competition.

There's no question that this very often does not work out in practice, because life is messy. There is no such thing as pure anything when it comes to human relationships, but it's still a good idea to strive for.

It's certainly better than the alternative anyway....which is....actually what is the alternative? I've not heard anything besides "meritocracy is bad because not everyone benefits and some get screwed". What should we do, hand out positions and salaries based on random number generators? I think no matter what kind of hand wringing and word twisting people do you're always gonna end up back at a system of quasi-meritocracy combined with nepotism, cronyism and other human bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meritocracy comes down to "Who deems someone worthy of merit?". Who or what makes the consideration? Is it done in a fair and impartial manner, or is the word "Meritocracy" used as a tool to further disenfranchise people out of the 'in group'?

If you dig in further, past the simple buzzword, its a method of distributed control of power, controlling social acceptance and shrouding it as "merit".

What does "Meritocracy" come down to? Turns out women don't get 'merit'. They get 'social media' positions. They get the fuzzy fluffy jobs because that's all they're good for, regarding merit. Similar with African Americans. Pidgeonholed, natch. Older people, same - seriously they 'just can't keep up!'.

I read the Hacker Manifesto back in '89\. I accepted it. I lived it. And as much as I wanted to accept "that we're all alike", Real Names and similar forced policies to disclose identity have poisoned this back to racism, sexism, nationalism, and ageism. I don't like it, and I don't like whatever pretty glitzy name is given to do this round of demeaning and ostracization.

<comment><USER3> _Turns out women don 't get 'merit'._

Please provide citations.

<comment><USER15> Sure.

[https://www.theguardian.com/women-in- leadership/2013/jun/24/...](https://www.theguardian.com/women-in- leadership/2013/jun/24/false-theory-meritocracy-women-lose)

The main takeaways here are:

1\. Players have a range of qualities. It is nigh on impossible to rank them in a simple linear order, since strengths and weaknesses come in bundles, not as a single order of merit.

2\. What makes someone a winner or a loser varies as they move up the ladder? Success criteria are context-dependent. Qualities suited to the top position may have little value in the middle, and vice versa. Indeed we may kill off the very leaders we need in middle echelon tournaments.

3\. Something like the Peter Principle operates, where people are promoted to their level of incompetence. We advance people on yesterday's, not tomorrow's, competence. It is also striking that no one goes down. Losers just get stuck in their positions or exit the game.

4\. People move ahead as much by luck as through performance. They get a good break, have a strong sponsor, make the right friends and get handed an opportunity to shine.

[https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because- of-...](https://theconversation.com/women-in-tech-suffer-because-of-american- myth-of-meritocracy-94269)

"In the U.S., women own 39 percent of all privately owned businesses but receive only around 4 percent of venture capital funding. Put another way, male-led ventures receive 96 percent of all funding." [https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner- statist...](https://www.nawbo.org/resources/women-business-owner-statistics)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/27...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272646267/how- the-meritocracy-myth-affects-women-in-technology)

Women account for just 6 percent of the chief executives of the top 100 tech companies

There's plenty enough to dig further in this area. The numbers are damning, and show that "Turns out women don't get 'merit'." rather effectively. Well, unless you think that half of the population has 'fair' representation with only 4% VC funding, or 6% CEOs.

<comment><USER3> You've shown that merit isn't a simple cardinal value; I buy that.

You've also shown that outcomes aren't equal. You haven't provided any reason to believe that the outcomes _should_ be equal - in particular, that a comparable number of women are actually competing with the men. There's a fundamental assumption here that women have the same goals as men, and prioritize them against other life choices in the same way. There's a lot of reason to think that both of those things are false.

<comment><USER31> The issue isn't that current outcomes aren't exactly equal. The inequality is larger than typical sex differences can explain. If current outcomes reflect an innate difference, the separation between the median woman and the median man has to be exceptionally large, the trait has to be exceptionally more variable in men, organizations have to be far more selective than other evidence suggests, and/or the trait must not be normally distributed.

<comment><USER32> I don't know what standard you have for "exceptionally more variable" but in a normal population you only need a 33% difference in standard deviation to get a ratio of 2x at +2stdev or almost 4x at +3stdev (here stdev is of the less- variable population).

I think relative to the population at large it's reasonable to think a programming career is a +2stdev event in inclination and skill toward abstract systems (programmers are ballpark 5% of the working population).

I don't mean to suggest that the male variability hypothesis is all or even most of the story, but to me a 33% difference in variability, while substantial, doesn't sound impossibly large — and it suggests male:female ratios that are in line with what we see in the industry.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Unicomp Ultra Classic keyboard, or, the IBM Model M reborn (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://jakeseliger.com/2008/05/07/product-review-unicomp-customizer-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> I own a Unicomp, and I'm a very happy customer. Their support is first-class too, especially for small or one-off orders (like custom keycaps).

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanbayne/12295182336/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanbayne/12295182336/)</comment>


Many Microsoft servers are powered by Linux - <AUTHOR> http://searchdns.netcraft.com/?restriction=site+ends+with&host=microsoft.com&lookup=wait..&position=limited

<comment><USER2> AFAIK, the servers itself are all-microsoft, most brobably netcraft.com is confused by load-balancers (akamai or something similar)

</comment><comment><USER3> The "Linux" servers are Akamai's.

</comment><comment><USER4> This has been going on since windows NT launched (as in, that's when people first found out). They just outsource a lot of their website load to external hosts who run Linux.

</comment><comment><USER5> Akamai isn't Msft they just have subdomains pointed to it

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Talking about "dogfooding" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food></comment>


2014 regulations: F1's engine revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.f1technical.net/features/19037 <comment><USER3> I find it sad that people are so obsessed right now with small engines. Small engine does not necessarily mean good efficiency. For instance, I have a C5 Corvette with a 5.7L V8 engine. It gets 29-30MPG on the freeway, and I usually get combined rating for about 27MPG. My friend had an M3 with a much smaller engine but same HP. It was getting maybe 16MPG combined, on a good day. Large engine does not necessarily equal good efficiency.

That's why I find all these rules idiotic. I personally would like to see a rule where each car gets X amount of fuel (adjusted in BTUs) per race. So say you can get 100 liters of gas or 85 liters of diesel, because diesel has more BTU/liter. That's all. Leave the rest up to the teams, let them figure out the most efficient way to spend their fuel. For instance, maybe hydraulic or nematic energy systems are better than electric. Let them try that. Maybe someone want's to do an all electric car with a diesel generator onboard for power, let them try that. Maybe someone want's to try going at it with hydrogen generator / electric combo. Let them try that too.

Millions of dollars are spent on F1, and all that money is being wasted on fiddling with exhaust positioning, rather then trying new and innovative technologies. The "Prius" layout is old news, there are better solutions to efficiency.

You can reword the most efficient cars by allocating an artificially low amount of fuel per race, and then holding cars in the pits for additional "penalty" time for each liter of fuel they take in over the baseline. That way the most competitive car would be the fastest car with the best fuel economy.

<comment><USER4> They are limited to only a 100kg of fuel per race, and may only consume 100kg/h. Meaning that, as stated in the article, they may only consume 50kg of fuel in a two hour race. Which is a very small amount of fuel for such cars.

I find it outstanding that an owner of a Corvette is complaining about a lack of innovation in Formula 1. The LS-series engine in your Corvette shares the same bore-center measure as the _original_ small block V8 Chevrolet (4.40 inches). It also places the camshaft inside the engine block. Which has made the development of Variable Valve Lift systems more complex (and more costly). Meaning that it has taken Chevrolet two more generations of Corvette after yours to introduce this technology. Something that was introduced into production vehicles by Honda in 1989, and later made its way into the U.S market in 1991 with the introduction of the NSX. The C5 still used the leaf- spring suspension, and balsa wood sandwiched between the floorboards as a cost cutting measure. Meaning that innovation in those areas was done as a way to cut costs down rather than to improve the efficiency or performance of the vehicle.

It might sound like I'm a Corvette hater. Not really. I do appreciate the raw and crude approach the engine provides. How the relatively light chassis with a perfect 50/50 balance allows for the vehicle to excel in high performance driving events. Even how the C5 matched the 0-60 times of the Porsche 911 Turbo (996 generation). But its a bit hard to read about how F1 is lacking in technology when you drive a vehicle that lacks it. This coming from the guy that corrects anyone that says that NASCAR is boring and does not feature any innovative technologies.

<comment><USER5> What's new in NASCAR these days?

<comment><USER6> While I don't follow either NASCAR or F1 it's my impression that NASCAR has much less focus on technology development. They strive to keep all the cars technically identical, so that races are close and are won or lost almost entirely on the basis of driver and crew skills.

F1 I think is much more about who can innovate technically within some parameter limits (of course in addition to having skilled drivers/crew).

<comment><USER4> They do focus on technology, but the rules are strict, and hardly ever change a lot. The basic ideas behind the Cup series has not changed much in a long time. But the implementations are quite amazing. Just look at the engines themselves. Or the safety improvements they have developed over the years. Plus, NASCAR is about being good at cheating and being great at not being caught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I probably found a good portion of the gear heads like myself on here -- I wanted to reach out for your support in my campaign! I'm the ONLY female racing driver in the world in pro development for INDYCAR -- I'm signing with a top team in 2014, and recently launched my CHASING INDY campaign, and would love your support!

www.ChasingIndy.com

Thank you!

<comment><USER8> You're not the first. There have been several women in indy before you, and there is at least one, Simona Di-something-or-other, who is already in the series. Coming on a tech website with your blatantly false spam isn't the way to make fans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can somebody explain how these 1.6L V6 engines have far more power than my 3.0L V6 car, and as much as many V10 and V12 super cars? All I can figure from the article is the high RPM and the turbo.

<comment><USER10> Insanely high RPM (18k+), crazy turbos, innovative valves, super high compression ratios. Plus each motor only had to last maybe 1000 miles, and they get essentially rebuilt every time they run.

<comment><USER8> Actually, the engines (and gearboxes, for that matter) don't get rebuilt. Breaking the FIA seal means they might as well replace the engine with a fresh one, since the same penalties apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why not bite the bullet and go electric only?

They can be really fast, money is not a problem and it's where we need inovation the most.

<comment><USER12> > electric only?

Boring.

There's something viscerally exciting about a reciprocating engine - <USER2> sound, the smell, the vibration, the brutishness of it.

I once got a ride in a P-51. There's just something indescribable about that V12 Merlin catching, and then digging in when the throttle is opened wide.

There's a reason for the title of this book: "Sigh for a Merlin".

<comment><USER11> Have you ever driven an electric sports car? Instant maximum torque at any speed.

Yeah, though I wasn't so lucky, I also love the sound and smell of a combustion engine. But I think that's generational, not something inherently more exiting. But I guess I'll have to wait and see what my grandchildren have to say.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, dude. I'll drive an electric car to work, but I'm not going to the electric car races.

As for generational, I've always been sorry that steam locomotives went off the rails before I was born. Diesel electric locomotives are boring.

<comment><USER11> Fair enough, you have a point there. Steam locomotives are awesome to this day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't follow F1, but this sounds pretty exciting. Hopefully the multiple variables introduced here will produce innovation that will flow down into normal production hybrid vehicles.

<comment><USER14> The new regulations certainly step up the engineering game, going into uncharted territories. I'm not sure that as a motorsport spectator I like these changes, though; there's something about the sound of the V8s or their predecessor V10s, revving at 20k RPM. It's a large part of what makes motorsport exciting. Compared to that, a 15k RPM 1.6L V6 seems pretty dull, regardless to how well it performs.

<comment><USER10> I wish they got away from such tight regulation of the technology, and let the teams really experiment. I'd like to see the F1 engine rules shortened to two rules.

1\. Competitors have a total of XX GGE ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent)) of fuel per 100km of race distance. 2\. Competitors may not use a device that prevents unusual risks to other drivers, spectators, or race officials.

Done. End of rule book.

The fuel mileage limit will encourage teams to optimize for effciency...beyond that let them have at it.

<comment><USER15> Then you don't have a motor racing formula, just a spending contest.

If you look at the technical regulations in F1, they have two main aims - ensuring driver and spectator safety, and controlling costs to maintain competitive racing.

Most of the current technical regulations are just special cases of your rule 2. Moveable aerodynamic devices are banned to prevent sudden loss of mid- corner traction (causing the car to violently roll off into the grandstands). Many of the dimensional restrictions are there to prevent the use of ground effect, for similar reasons. Wheel tethers reduce the chance of a wheel flying off and killing a spectator (something that has happened in several motorsport formulae). Restrictions on fuel composition prevent teams from using explosive fuels or oxidizers. Limits on wing sizes and aspect ratios restrict downforce, to ensure that the drivers aren't subject to intolerable g-forces.

The culture of F1 is based around a belief that there is no such thing as the spirit of the law, only the letter. Devious loopholes are applauded for their ingenuity and characterise most development in the modern sport. On the other hand, many people in the sport remember the dark days, when driver fatalities were just part of the sport. Teams and drivers understand that in the absence of regulation, the Nash equilibrium inevitably entails dead drivers and dead spectators.

The F1 rulebook isn't an external imposition on the sport, it is a document that is designed by mutual agreement between Bernie, FOTA, the FIA and the GPDA. Every word of it has been hard fought and represents the least-worst compromise between those various interests.

Unrestricted racing is a trope that is often raised by outsiders to motorsport, but the reality is that without the technical regulations, there is no racing at all, just a contest to see who can spend the most, with a mortuary full of charred and mangled drivers as collateral damage.

<comment><USER10> Yes, because of course the current regulations are doing SO well at keeping the cost of F1 down.

I should point out that there was a time (not, coincidentally, imo, arguable the greatest period in F1 history) when the constructors were given substantially more leeway - look at the golden age when some builds came out with mid-engined vehicles for instance, real innovation at the time, or other innovative layouts like the Tyrell P34 6-wheeler, or the fan cars, or the turbine cars that ran at Indianapolis (not F1, but close, and many F1 cars were entered at Indy in those days).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So many regulations. You can't have that, and that. No, you can't have that either. I wonder what kind of engines the F1 engineers could come up with if they would enjoy the freedom to pursue more exotic designs.

<comment><USER17> They would come up with this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_X2010](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_X2010)

Adrian Newey (needs no introduction if you are an F1 fan, look up his accomplishments if you are not) did exactly what you are talking about with the RB X2010 and the car is incredible to say the least.

Much like my sibling comment says, a no-regulations formula league would be financially un-viable for all but a few teams. As it is, F1 is struggling considerably to balance development and testing costs with keeping the smaller teams in business. And those back-half teams are still driving very uncompetitive cars compared to the big 3 or 4 teams - we're talking 2+ seconds off the pace per lap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm hoping that the turbocharging system makes it into production vehicles. Being able to utilize the energy wasted by the exhaust system is a big boost (pun very intended) in efficiency. If the turbine is able to always spin at a given RPM, then it can generate enough electricity to forgo the alternator, maybe the mechanical water pump and A/C compressor (replaced by electric ones), and power an electric power steering motor. This would also help in packaging.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really hope this opens up the competition. The last couple of years have been a little one-sided given Red Bull's dominance and while this has not been strictly due to engines (Red Bull uses the same Renault engines as many of the other F1 teams) it would be nice to make them work just a little harder to win the title.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ha, if I had anything to say about it, I'd outlaw anything on an F1 car that had a transistor of any sort in it, except for safety equipment.

No radios, no software engine management, no data collection. Auld Skool driver skill.

</comment><comment><USER19> And the fact that the engine development freeze has been lifted (for a few years anyway) is equally exciting.

</comment><comment><USER20> F1 is going the wrong direction.

<comment><USER21> Why do you feel that way?

<comment><USER20> _I_ , at least, want to see fast cars. I don't care about any of the green stuff. It's a sport.

<comment><USER22> They are still going to be ridiculously fast cars.

<comment><USER22> Further on this, most people who don't really keep up with racing don't realize just how fast F1 cars.

Here's[1] a fantastic overlay of a very famous corner at Spa. FIA GT cars are not slow cars[2] but the differences are tremendous.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex5dhhpSHCw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex5dhhpSHCw) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIA_GT_Championship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIA_GT_Championship) [BONUS IN CAR FOOTAGE] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cNqaPSHv0)

<comment><USER23> I'd like to see that comparison between a F1 car and LMP1 car. considering that the LMP1 actually produces more downforce than a F1 car it should be interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The hard truth: Newspaper monopolies are gone forever - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/06/15/the-hard-truth-newspaper-monopolies-are-gone-forever/ <comment><USER2> Douglas Adams, Wired, 1995 (I think) <http://yoz.com/wired/1.01/adams.html>:

 _..Over the last few years I've regularly been cornered by nervous publishers or broadcasters or journalists or film makers and asked about how I think computers will affect their various industries. For a long time most of them were desperately hoping for an answer that translated roughly into 'not very much'. ('People like the smell of books, they like popcorn, they like to see programmes at exactly the same moment as their neighbours, they like at least to have lots of articles that they've no interest in reading', etc.) But it's a hard question to answer because it's based on a faulty model. It's like trying to explain to the Amazon River, the Mississippi, the Congo and the Nile how the coming of the Atlantic Ocean will affect them. The first thing to understand is that river rules will no longer apply.._

 _..Television companies are not in the business of delivering television programs to their audience, they're in the business of delivering audiences to their advertisers. (This is why the BBC has such a schizophrenic time - it's actually in a different business from all its competitors). And magazines are very similar: each actual sale across the newsagent's counter is partly an attempt to defray the ludicrous cost of manufacturing the damn thing but is also, more significantly, a very solid datum point. The full data set represents the size of the audience the publisher can deliver to its advertisers..._

 _..Now I regard magazine advertising as a big problem. I really hate it. It overwhelms the copy text, which is usually reduced to a dull, grey little stream trickling its way through enormous glaring billboard-like pages all of which are clamoring to draw your attention to stuff you don't want; and the first thing you have to do when you buy a new magazine is shake it over a bin in order to shed all the coupons, sachets, packets, CDs and free labrador puppies which make them as fat an unwieldy as a grandmother's scrapbook. And then, when you are interested in buying something, you can't find any information about it because it was in last month's issue which you've now thrown away. I bought a new camera last month, and bought loads of camera magazines just to find ads and reviews for the models I was interested in. So I resent about 99% of the advertising I see, but occasionally I want it enough to actually buy the stuff. There's a major mismatch - something is ripe to fall out of the model..._

Then he starts to go downhill in the same way that most people do/did when they were framing the question wrong. DNA was the best at seeing if the question was framed wrong, but even he apparently fell for it sometimes. Basically he predicts unobtrusive, helpful ads on digital magazines & micro- payments for content.

It's all very well to say that papers should have seen this all coming a long time ago and we can have a great time talking about it. I think the reality is that see it, don't see it.. it wouldn't have mattered in most cases. They aren't Microsoft missing out on tablets carriage makers that should have started making auto parts. They were horse breeders. The fanciest breeders probably though they were safe at first. No Lady is going to travel to London in one of those crazy horseless carriages. Local donkey breeders too. Horseless carriages are hardly going to plow a field?

Content for readers was never the business they were in true. But it was always their core competency. They were never experts in advertising that could have figured out how to keep delivering to their real customers regardless of the medium. Pre web print was a major channel through which one can do quality advertising. Now it is a small channel that one can do poor advertising, one step above mailbox spam. If you are _looking_ for a camera you're not going to look in a magazine.

I've heard that the terms of this deal make the investment more like a loan. Maybe it is. But if Buffet is buying these newspapers thinking they have a long profitable future ahead, I think he's wrong. They're rivers in the ocean, camel trains in the age of railroads, pick your metaphor.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is true for the current transition, I think, but historically it was only a quite short period that newspapers had any sort of monopoly-esque hold over particular geographical areas. The traditional business model didn't depend on that; rather, there were many newspapers competing, even in smaller towns.

The competing-heterogenous-information-sources model discussed here is actually closer to how the newspaper industry worked. Some of the competing newspapers were large companies, others were smaller or even a single editor/publisher; some were thick while others were barely a few pages; some were dailies while others came out less often; some were morning papers, while others came out in the afternoons or evenings; some relied primarily on subscriptions while others focused on retail or street sales; some were business-targeted while others were targeted at home readers, and still others were targeted at explicit political/interest groups; etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> None of my friends under forty subscribe to a newspaper. But they want to know what is happening in their communities, they hunger for it.

Newspapers need to lose the national news, I don't need to read a story 24 hours after it has been disected on the web and cable channels.

I'd also say forget looking for a solution on the web. The answer is mobile with a twitter style continously updating feed of local news and sports.

People don't have or won't take a half hour to read a newspaper but they've got five minutes here and there throughout the day to see what is happening in their local area.

Want total anonymity? Then you can subscribe. Willing to fill out a profile so we can target ads, then your feed is free.

What advertiser wouldn't want to reach twenty something college educated women in Podunk? Fewer, more targeted ads inserted in stream that get better results.

<comment><USER5> As someone who produced a local tv newscast for five years, I largely agree, though not completely. You do need enough larger scope news for people to feel informed and educated, but it's clearly a secondary concern, you're right.

If I had my way, we would have had subdomains on our site for both geographical and categorical reading. Local tv news will always have SOME appeal, but not because we're doing our job better than national networks, but because we're local. It's amazing how many don't get that. Yes, Fox and CNN are our competitors, but if local news wants a chance, we have to fight them on our strengths. And it's the exact same with our websites and the websites of any other news outlets.

... What a revolting development.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, what is revolting? And why?

<comment><USER5> I find it really troubling that in a time when people want to be connected and informed like never before (and have the technology to be so) so many in smaller news organizations try to be every thing to all people, and end up failing spectacularly trying to out perform larger operations at games the larger operations are finely tuned for. Smaller outfits, especially those limited in geographic area, should play to their strong suits. In this case, they should do as much as possible about having LOCAL news.

Watch your local evening news, and if your station does the 5-6:30 model, it's almost certain that the 5:30-6 section will focus on national news, occasionally different anchors, and will have the lowest ratings. The three 30 minute sections' ratings usually follow this model: ¬_/

And news stations will tell themselves "Oh, we put national news in the middle because it has low ratings." I get that if you're forced to play the short view and juts have to fill time. But I do honestly think that if you put more effort into that, over time, you could cultivate a worthwhile news show there. Possibly even just make the 5-6 one hour, and use the expanded time to help flesh out the rest of your stories and make them all run an extra minute longer.

It's just as someone who's worked nearly all of my post-high school life (being 31) in local news, it's always frustrated me how only a few hours a day of local content are produced locally in most places. I think it's a vast misuse (unuse?) of available resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What newspapers have is the trust of a powerful local brand--even Google gives local newspapers some of the highest PRs in these markets.

Smaller the market; better the brand. No one else has this and that's what Buffet is buying.

If I'm a local SMB in a small town, chances are that I'm not going to trust some big company with my SEM, SEO, retargeting, and Facebook ads. If local papers can offer these services, they can win local in aggregate better than any other company.

<comment><USER2> I was working in SEM, SEO, etc for small businesses when the transition away from yellow pages was happening.

About 50% of our customers had at some point been with Sensis (The yellow pages guys) or some other old media companies' attempt to start an online advertising consulting branch. Clicks were cheap back then but they were usually getting about $10 per visit in when the adwords rate was about $0.50. They were on yearly packages attached to their print stuff but basically so price wasn't really transparent but it was in the vicinity.

The reality is that these trusted local brands are good at running a local newspaper. They are as good at running adwords campaign as they are at making the next Facebook.

BTW, I would like to see where/if I'm wrong. Does anyone know of examples of local old media with an awesome online presence for local stuff? I'm sure there are some.

<comment> mkr-hn <http://onlineathens.com/> and <http://www.athenstalks.com/>

The stats at the bottom of AthensTalks are fun to look at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What gets me is the number of times I look at the local newspaper and the article about a local issue is written by a reporter from somewhere else. The only reason to go to a news website is that you feel they are an authority on a subject. The local paper needs to realize that their website and the local TV station's website and the local news radio's websites are all the same medium. They need to excel at putting down stories that go in-depth locally. I will read national networks for national news.

You would think with how word heavy the internet has been, newspaper writers would have thrived.

</comment><comment><USER9> Classic case of an industry that has controlled the broadcast of content for over a century and now they've lost control and can't seem to adapt. Music and TV industries are in this boat too. We all know the music side isn't going to end well for them and it looks like the TV thing won't either, although they have been able to fend off change better than other industries.

</comment><comment><USER10> There aren't many "hard truths" in this world. I would say after reading this article that newspapers have hit a bottom. Look at Warren Buffet's recent investments. The future of paying for editorial, premium content is for groundbreaking work (like NYT, WaPo, The Atlantic) and local. "Monopoly" is a relative term, and what is and isn't a newspaper is changing, the real value is the content.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't necessarily disagree with Buffett's thought process here. Roger McNamee may be right in that we are seeing a return of premium content due to the monetization problems with mobile advertising and the consumer's dislike of them. Of course, I do have my concerns with some like Mary Meeker whom believe otherwise.

There are holes that aggregation sites like the Huffington Post simply cannot fill and I do believe that consumers are looking for something more. It may be because the they are becoming accustomed to paying for applications on mobile devices.

</comment><comment><USER12> Newspapers should move from reporting news to analyzing various issues. I consider the German Die Zeit as a prime example of this model.

<comment><USER13> Newspaper monopolies are local/regional and that is often not sufficient market for an analyst magazine.</comment></comment>


Newfangled Credit Cards Cause Headaches at Stores Across America - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-13/newfangled-credit-cards-cause-headaches-at-stores-across-america <comment><USER2> Most places I use my card at have chip readers. The big downside is how long it takes to complete the transaction now. It was a few seconds, now it can be 30-45. Just standing there with a dumb look on your face.</comment>


Unix as IDE - <AUTHOR> https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/series/unix-as-ide/ <comment><USER2> This was how Unix was presented to me when I was first introduced to me. I was told it was like industrial machinery - designed for those who know how to use it, efficient, dangerous if you aren't careful.

Which is exactly what a good tool should be.

When IDEs (the kind that comes as a GUI'ed bundle of things thought to be the most appropriate for the purpose by committee of someones, somewhere) started becoming popular, I didn't get it, at all. Put aside tool tips (which annoy me far more than is rational); it seemed to me that the idea was to build a toy model workshop on the work bench of a fully outfitted workshop. Why would anyone want to use that? Why bother in the first place?

I mean, I do get it. And who knows, maybe if I used one of those long enough to break muscle memory and the conceptual assumptions that don't map, I'd change my mind. But so far, vi + shell + standard utilities + what I build have served me just fine, and if for some reason I were to need "more power", whatever that means, I'd probably move to emacs.

And I still maintain that tool tips/balloon help/ _obscuring the very thing you 're pointing at_ is a stupidly rude anti-pattern. Even worse is not making it possible to turn off.

<comment><USER3> The difference is IDEs understand the underlying structure of the code, including relationships between entities, symbol types in their context, indexes for searching, and so on. That allows you to express transforms that can't be expressed if everything is just a text stream. I can grab a chunk of a function in resharper and do an "extract method", and it can figure out data dependencies, or I can do a "find usages" for a variable called "map" and not pick up every comment that has the word "map" in it, or I can move a class to a new module and let it figure out all the call sites that need to change their using statements.

Comparing unix to an IDE is like comparing a CSV file to a relational database. They both store data in tables, but you're not going to replace Postgres with grep, I hope, even though you could do very basic "queries" with grep. And unix can never be a very good IDE, comparatively, because "text streams" are not a sufficiently good data structure for representing program structure.

<comment><USER2> There is nothing about text streams that prohibit tools from understanding whatever language you're writing in. Unless you have an very interesting compiler, your IDE is processing text, too.

But also, you seem to believe that somehow communication between applications is somehow limited to pipes, which makes the comparison inapt.

Ignoring the category error (text format in a data file vs. server application + storage), please explain what your IDE does that cannot be communicated over a socket? Or dbus (oh god please don't, but the point stands)?

<comment><USER4> I am not the parent you reply to, but see my previous reply for the capabilities you miss in 'dumb' editors.

"here is nothing about a text streams that prohibit tools from understanding whatever language you're writing in"

Well it might be true that you can deduce the language of some text stream but you need to make a big step in order to interpret it. You are talking about a compiler. Well a compiler takes a compilation unit, not some stream of text. To infer the semantics of a program the program needs to be present, not a part of it. Granted, a program might be broken up in independent modules, of course.

Make no mistake, a 'dumb' editor like sublimetext could understand a php symfony or a java struts project, if it would get the same analysis tools available in eclipse for example. It could be done, but it is massively more difficult than just running a syntax highlighter and running a rough tagger on some text. Its sad because I believe that fast, slim, editors that know as much as a massive IDE is the best of both worlds.

I have seen the code for eclipse -- there is so much dancing, it's a miracle that handling a key press eventually completes in some time.

<comment><USER5> > I have seen the code for eclipse -- there is so much dancing, it's a miracle > that handling a key press eventually completes in some time.

In many IDE's it barely does, I've had issues with Eclipse, Visual Studio and IntelliJ at some point regarding input latency or the total freeze of the UI while it tries to handle magic with my input in the background.

Visual Studio has gotten progressively better since VS2010, especially with Roslyn; IntelliJ-based products have made strides since IDEA 13 where they really started to focus on input latency; Eclipse was never quite as bad, but it's a pain to use compared to VS or IntelliJ so it's irrelevant that it freezes 10% less in my eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It lacks the I in IDE. Those different tools are not integrated.

In a java IDE the debugger steps through your source in the same editor view that you just used for editing. You can hover over each identifier while you code or debug to get the docs in a floating panel. Editing incrementally computes compilation errors while you type. Content assist has complete knowledge of the types at your caret position and thus can make accurate suggestions what can be inserted there. Saving the file while debugging automatically compiles the code, runs tests and splices it into the running VM so you can continue debugging the running process with the new code while also showing you which lines you changed relative to the most recent VCS commit. And of course there's more.

<comment><USER7> If you can't debug with just print statements, you're doing it wrong :)

<comment><USER8> "My primary debugging tool is Console.Writeline(). To be honest, I think that's true of a lot of programmers." \--Anders Hejlsberg

If Anders Hejlsberg does it, there's no shame in it.

<comment><USER9> There's no shame in it but that doesn't mean that it's the best or most efficient way of doing things.

I've found that stepping through code in a debugger at a human pace, and getting to really understand what's happening when a bug occurs is invaluable.

<comment><USER10> I don't trust debuggers with multi-threaded programs.

Organized (multi verbose level) tracing built right into the application can go a long way before you actually need a debugger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >But I think that trying to shoehorn Vim or Emacs into becoming something that it's not isn't quite thinking about the problem in the right way.

...Well, this is clearly a Vim user. If you're never leaving Emacs, and you're writing plugins to do everything inside it, you're using Emacs exactly as intended.

<comment><USER12> [http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of- em...](http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/3996068979/the-levels-of-emacs- proficiency)

"It was all just text. Why did you need another application for it? Why should only the shell prompt be editable? Why can't I move my cursor up a few lines to where the last command spewed out its results? All these problems simply disappear when your shell (or shells) simply becomes another Emacs buffer, upon which all of the text manipulation power of Emacs can be brought to bear."

<comment><USER11> This is Atom's great failing: it's trying to do the emacs thing, but it doesn't treat all buffers uniformly: your settings window, your terminal window, and the various text windows are fundamentally different. Until this is fixed, it's not even in the running as a usable editor for me.

<comment><USER13> > This is Atom's great failing: it's trying to do the emacs thing, but it > doesn't treat all buffers uniformly

That's definitely _a_ great failing, but I think it has two greater still: not being written in Lisp, and being written in JavaScript.

The former could be overcome (Alpha was an amazing editor for the Mac written in TCL), and after all there are plenty of great programmes not written in Lisp (emacs, for example, has a C core …).

But JavaScript‽ JavaScript: there's got to be a better way. JavaScript: warn your friends about it. JavaScript: dissatisfaction guaranteed.

<comment><USER11> JS is fine. It's got warts, yes, but so has elisp. It's also got proper lexical scoping, and real, function-equivalent lambdas, which are surprisingly rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This instantly brought to mind the classic 1984 book, The Unix Programming Environment, by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike [1]. Note that they call Unix a programming environment, not an operating system. This book shows that the original purpose of Unix is to be a tool for writing software.

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

<comment><USER15> They're not calling Unix a programming environment instead of an operating system. The title of the book refers to the programming environment of the Unix operating system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> At some point I realized Unix is basically a long-running IDE + REPL, and thought that was just _so cool_. And then I realized how horribly inefficient it is at being that. So I started longing for the days when we had some kind of OS where it _actually is_ a IDE + REPL, like an OS based on Lisp. And then I learned that that already was done and didn't turn out as cool as people had hoped. Oh well.

<comment><USER17> The C64 was like that. Not Lisp but it booted right into a BASIC REPL. BASIC was the C64's operating system. I still think there is a niche for such a system today (mainly for developing rapidly changing business applications you'd nowadays use Excel for, as well as education).

<comment><USER18> Almost all 8-bit computer were like that.

I was so glad when I left REPLs and then debuggers and IDEs, to compiled languages and text-editor + command-line compilation and open source-code. I just cannot fathom the trend of the last 5 years where I hear and read people who cannot live without an IDE, a debugger and a REPL. It feels like living in a jail cell for me; a cell I left 20-25 years ago.

Incidentally, I just had to install an IDE today, for HDL development. I urgently have to find a way to turn the process into a Makefile or I will throw the computer through the window before the week-end comes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently contributed an awk filter for doing text transformation. I think it was some kind of code for converting POSIX attributes to LDIF or something like that. I was kind of surprised when one of the replies that I received was a request to re-implement it as a Python API. They didn't seem interested in using piplelines as a way to glue utilities together into something bigger. I don't have anything against Python, I just like the idea of being able to integrate wildly different implementations (C, perl, awk, sed, m4, Perl, Python, etc...) to solve problems. It's a kind of component based approach that the Unix/Linux/BSD shell makes really easy.

</comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105768) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3594098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3594098)

</comment><comment><USER21> I've tried for the past couple of years to get into vim but I can't force myself to remember the odd short cuts I can't seem to ever match up with the action it's doing. I could if I rewrote them butttttt then that blows when I want to jump into a new server without my config. So it's always been nano for one liners and sublime through sftp mounted filesystem.

<comment><USER22> you've probably never:

1\. been forced to use a system with nothing but vi, ed, and ex, which was common for commercial unixes until the 90's

2\. had to make thousands of edits to thousands of files in minutes without access to a scripting environment or other more advanced tools

3\. had to edit and debug a program under the above conditions on a super laggy dialup internet connection

vi is a force multiplier for operating a terminal under duress in adverse network conditions. that's literally why it was developed. i say it does an even better job of it under good, modern conditions and unless you look at it through that lens, it's never going to make much sense to you. and those adverse conditions still pop up now and then, especially with wireless networks and public cloud shitstorms.

 _" [Bill] Joy explained that the terse, single character commands and the ability to type ahead of the display were a result of the slow 300 baud modem he used when developing the software and that he wanted to be productive when the screen was painting slower than he could think."_

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

<comment><USER23> To be honest vi and vim are different enough that as someone who was taught on vim, I get lost when I have to do anything beyond opening a file in vi.

<comment><USER22> yeah, it's pretty awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> iirc (very vaguely) this has been discussed on hn before. the entire series is available as an ebook here: [https://github.com/mrzool/unix-as- ide](https://github.com/mrzool/unix-as-ide)

<comment><USER25> Thank you. The ebook is helpful

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A early variant of UNIX was explicitly that. But it was called Programmer's Workbench.

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

It introduced version control (SCCS), make, lex, yacc and more.

</comment><comment><USER27> Unix as IDE is an oxymoron simply because it's not integrated. How about we swap the "I" with something else? Maybe Universal Development Environment?

</comment><comment><USER28> Shouldn't there be (2012) in the title?

<comment><USER23> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I thought this is another acme post. Oh NO<comment>, you don't even use a mouse?!</comment></comment>


My Biggest Lisp Project  - <AUTHOR> http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/2008/03/my-biggest-lisp-project.html

<comment><USER2> ...and then they rejected it. Lovely idea to spend years making software that only one business can use.

I'm not saying that the code these guys made can't be used for other projects, there are probably lots of opportunities...but there should be a lesson here about considering your market before making any commitments.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately it's the way it works in some areas. Just like with any other startup: you work and work to get something done and then hope your clients are willing to pay for it. Except in some markets the entire user base is a handful of companies with really deep pockets. I guess you should always try to get feedback as soon as possible but it's not always easy depending on who you're dealing with.</comment></comment>


Yet Another Reason to Start Your Own Business: Programming jobs suck - <AUTHOR> http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/03/why_a_career_in.html <comment><USER2> I also disagree with several of the minor premises in this article. Such as his statement that "So what advantage does a 60-year-old .NET programmer have over a 27-year-old .NET programmer when they both have, at most, 5 years of experience doing .NET programming? Absolutely none." ... That 60-year-old programmer has more experience and wisdom and that is a huge advantage over a newb!

Overall the author is making a good point. Technology workers have (or are beginning) to wake up to the fact that their skills are commoditizable. Anyone (anywhere) can be trained up to do their job. This is why most tech people get caught in the trap of the never ending skill upgrade cycle ... "If I could just learn and get a certificate in X I can earn the big bucks...". When what they really need to start thinking is how to apply the knowledge that they have into real solutions that they can then monetize.

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally love programming. I'd gotten to a point a few years ago in my career where I moved out of programming roles only to discover that I missed it. Helping my younger brother through a CS programming really got me going again, and I credit that experience with getting me going on a startup.

That said, sure there's very little cool about being programmer #45 for an insurance company. The truly gifted developers need to be at a software firm, a consulting company (more new dev, less maintenance), working on an open source project, or (best yet) creating their own software.

</comment><comment><USER4> "There is a prestigious school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, devoted to science and engineering, and while I'm sure that there are some students there who are majoring in 'computer science,' the science that's taught isn't related to the dirty low-prestige job of creating e-commerce websites using ASP.NET"

That note is interesting to me. A major reason I'm on this site right now, in addition to the discussions and the talk about startups, is the fact that Paul Graham was one of the first authors that I read that laid a very solid case for smart programming leading to good business- which of course validated what I and probably most of you already knew or felt. The author of this article is actually saying that an MIT type education is worthless in the real world where you need ASP.NET programming to get the 'real work' done. The author kind of lost all of his credibility for me at that point.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that his views on schools doesn't really translate to coding. The author talks about the prestige of programming being low, which in IT it is, but there are obviously coders that have prestige. John Carmack, for one, is very highly regarded in the computer science field, but he never went to a prestigious CS school. What I find interesting is that programmers only get prestige from actually DOING something. This can happen at a big company but more often than not it happens at a startup. Lawyers and Doctors 'get' their prestige from going to school and getting their title, whether it is deserved or not, but programmers have to earn it through solving problems. I find that much more rewarding, it will mean much more for me to be prestigous because of my work than because of where I went to school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me, programming is just a means to an end.

I do it not because I find programming intrinsically rewarding necessarily but rather because I find the creation of applications to demonstrate my ideas to be highly rewarding.

So obviously, writing code for someone else would not be rewarding for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Because of this, the computer programming industry within the United States is an industry with a shrinking number of jobs"

Is this backed up with any numbers? People have been predicting the demise of programming jobs in the US for years, yet it never seems to happen. I suspect because the claim is based on the fallacy that there's a finite amount of programming to be done.

</comment><comment><USER6> "I think that, if you can't get into a Top 14 law school or a top graduate business schol, then public accounting probably provides a better career path than computer programming."

If you have a desire to make things being an accountant will hardly compare with being a programmer.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't necessarily agree with the "low prestige" argument. I think that as the internet becomes a greater part of young people's lives (i.e. myspace), the industry becomes more hip and being a programmer for lets say Yahoo! or Google carries a "cooler" image

<comment><USER8> A programmer for google or yahoo, sure. A programmer for Microsoft or Adobe, not so much. Moreover, outside the big names, software companies are largely unknown; to most of us, hearing that someone works for, e.g, Fog Creek, is pretty nifty, but to the average person, it's meaningless.

<comment><USER7> Very true, but maybe our overall image is gradually improving, esp. as the tech/internet generation matures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are a few points in this article I don't agree with. But it makes an interesting case as to why controlling your own fate, as a small business owner, is a much better choice than 'getting a real job' in the IT industry.

</comment><comment><USER6> "No one cares if you know how to program in COBOL for example. It's completely useless knowledge."

Well Monster lists 1055 Cobol jobs: http://jobsearch.monster.com/Search.aspx?q=cobol&fn;=&lid;=&re;=130&cy;=us&JSNONREG;=1

</comment><comment><USER9> I think everyone, from the developers to the consumers, would be happier of people like the author of this article stayed out of software.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to start  autoplay? - <AUTHOR> As you know, some browsers prevent 'autoplay' in <audio id="sound" src="track.mp3" autoplay></audio>. I have 2 solutions and need to choose only one:
1) <body onclick="document.getElementById('sound').play();">
VS
2)
document.addEventListener('click', musicPlay);
function musicPlay() {
  document.getElementById('sound').play();
}
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Both do the same. (2) is more modern syntax as onclick DOM attributes are deprecated.

[https://stackoverflow.com/](https://stackoverflow.com/) might be better suited for specific programming language questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, Sir.</comment></comment>


The curious case of the mobile MOBA - <AUTHOR> http://www.bartverschoor.com/#!The-curious-case-of-the-mobile-MOBA/c1ld3/4770C7CC-7074-4466-B6E8-6C356055CECA <comment><USER2> I think the most competitive RTS games require a mouse (or other peripheral device) to achieve the desired level of immersion. I'm not sure how to best explain the difference between finger-tapping on a screen and using a mouse, but having spent lots of time on both platforms, it's definitely there.

<comment><USER3> Another issue: lag. I have yet to see a wi-fi connection without occasional periods of enormous latency, packet loss, or both. Cellular data is even worse.

RTSs and MOBAs both seriously suffer under those conditions.

Who's going to plug an Ethernet cable into their tablet just for one game?

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the nice aspects of tablet gaming (Hearthstone, Vainglory), is that bringing your tablet with you to a friend is a frictionless way of setting up a 'lan party'. Vainglory is best played with team members sitting in the same room. Gone are the days that you'd have to carry with you bulky laptops or worst, transport your tower/desktop to a friend.

On wifi: The privilege I enjoy of living in a country that has historically had among the fastest internet connections in the world biases my view on this. I've been called an LPB (Low Ping Bastard) since 1997 :-). From the games of Vainglory I played I found it feels very responsive. Many places don't have fast internet connections, so you do make a fair point, but I doubt that wifi is the bottleneck here.

On cellphone data: The cellphone contract I use has an unlimited data plan fast enough to stream youtube videos; but it is not yet reliable enough to play Vainglory from the passenger seat. It is essentially unplayable even though I have an above average data plan. I realize that until more providers switch to a flat fee structure and upgrade their infrastructure, 'true mobile' gaming for RTSs and FPSs isn't going to happen. However, these type of games require so much cognitive attention that the situations where you'd play this on-the-go is very limited (e.g. domestic trips via train, car: passenger seat and plane (international trips are too expensive due to roaming fees)). You don't really want to be playing Vainglory when you are out camping in the woods, I hope :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vainglory is an incredibly fun MOBA. I could see it getting really popular, especially as the larger gain adoption

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Bribri,

I wrote this article a year ago and I decided to submit it because the take aways are still very relevant today. When I wrote the article, Vainglory wasn't released yet. I've played a fair amount of Vainglory and they did indeed crack the code for a mobile MOBA. The Halcyon Fold map from Vainglory is a derivative of Twisted Treeline which offers enough strategic depth to be played at the competitive level, unlike Zynga's Solstice Arena. This, and the fluidity of the game sets it apart from the others imo. I still believe Super Evil Megacorp would have been better served with a more tongue-in-cheek visual style / IP if they want to address the entirety of the iPad install-base. This would have lowered the entry barrier for those who do not particularly enjoy the high fantasy style and would allow them to piggy-back off of successful mobile predecessors such as Rovio's Angry Birds and Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja by means of profit sharing on guest appearances. I'm very optimistic about Vainglory's future.</comment></comment>


People testing NGINX - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=welcome+to+nginx&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

<comment><USER2> You should change the link to put it in quotes, out of fairness. Less exciting then, though.</comment>


RIM to launch iPad rival in November - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/hardware/BlackBerry-to-launch-iPad-rival-in-November/articleshow/6240311.cms <comment><USER2> I seem to remember that not so long ago, before Apple announced the iPad (and before it became clear what it was going to be), all you heard was "well it can't possibly be a tablet, nobody has ever made a successful tablet PC". Now, not a week goes by or there's another article or blog post talking about the next potential "iPad killer". Times sure change... and awfully fast too...</comment>


Ask HN: What music do you listen to while you work? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 50+ links from 14 days ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745343)

</comment><comment><USER3> I tend to hop over on soma.fm and pick a station. Usually "Sonic Universe" but I sometimes bounce around to the folk stuff, dubstep, celtic, etc.

Overall I like listening to either instrumental stuff or stuff I've never heard before, I feel like listening to songs with words that I know becomes a distraction somehow.

Interestingly, while driving and doing chores it's the exact opposite - I'm always relistening to songs I've heard a million times :)

<comment><USER4> Ditto. _Groove Salad_ , _Fluid_ , and _Sonic Universe_ channels on Soma FM. Enough to tune out the world without breaking my concentration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't code, I do financial reporting, but I figured I'd answer anyway.

When I am doing tedious tasks that don't require much brainpower, I listen to hiphop/R&B (my favorite genre).

For actual hard analytical work, I listen almost exclusively to lo-fi hiphop. I need the drums for pacing and energy, but the instrumentals are very soothing and non-distracting. I'd seriously recommend trying lo-fi out if you like hiphop.

</comment><comment><USER6> Primarily video game soundtracks. They're made to play in the background while you perform tasks and come in all sorts of moods / intensity levels.

Favorites:

\- FTL

\- Crypt of the Necrodancer

\- Shatter

\- Skyrim

\- Deus Ex (all)

\- Frozen Synapse

\- Mirror's Edge

\- Anno (all)

\- Civilization (esp. Beyond Earth)

\- Transistor and Bastion (skipping vocal tracks)

\- Ori, Journey, Flower

Also House, Dubstep, etc., though it's hard to find mixes without vocal tracks.

</comment><comment><USER7> MCMXC a.D. By Enigma

Music for Programming

Music for the masses by Depeche Mode

Syro by Aphex Twin

The inevitable end by Royksopp

Dead can dance by Dead can dance

Ghost in the shell soundtrack by Kenji Kawaii

I also listen to a lot of podcasts lately though I tend to tune them out and they become mostly white noise.

</comment><comment><USER8> I listen to the same rap albums over and over again.

The up-tempo beats and lyrics keep me well paced throughout the day

The first part of my day is spent listening to either Kanye West's discography or Kid Cudi's discography (omitting some of his experimental stuff) then I might mix in other albums after lunch

</comment><comment><USER9> I listen almost exclusively to EDM mixes.

Podcasts or YouTube videos are usually about an hour long, and the songs are mixed so they flow continuously from one to the next.

I find the constant beat, and somewhat repetitive melodies and rhythms help to get me into a state of flow.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like this site: [https://www.focusatwill.com/music/#player](https://www.focusatwill.com/music/#player) . My favorites are the Focus Spa and Einstein's Genius channels.

</comment><comment><USER11> I play sitar or flute music on youtube. I feel that it increases my concentration a lot and helps me focus as it doesn't has any lyrics and the music calms the mind.

</comment><comment><USER12> Dance drum and bass. ironically it keeps me at a mid level steady pace. either that or spotify's "music for concentration" playlist.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys

</comment><comment><USER14> Piano - The Best Of YIRUMA</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best fiction book you've ever read?  - <AUTHOR> I've been suffering from burnout lately and one of the things I read was that reading books unrelated to work/productivity is supposed to help. I'm headed in vacation in a couple of weeks and I'm curious what the best fiction book you ever read was? If your book is already in the comments below please just upvote it. <comment><USER2> A confederacy of dunces, amazing book! tragedy, comedy, insane characters, really good book!

<comment><USER3> The biggest tragedy of A Confederacy of Dunces is that it's author, John Kennedy Toole, did not live to see its publishing and success. I also love this book!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I seriously recommend the Riverworld series, written by the excellent Philip José Farmer. I think after The Foundation from Asimov I cannot find anything good or exciting for fiction.

<http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Jos%C3%A9_Farmer>

PD: I've read a lot, guys. Those were my favs :D

</comment><comment><USER5> It's so hard to recommend something without a frame of reference. Personally, I've found myself re-reading The _Lord of the Rings_ lately.

But, if I had to pick one book that was my favourite, I might say _Moby Dick_. (I'll admit that I actually read it first after seeing the Wrath of Khan as a kid)

<comment><USER4> I agree with this. "Fiction" is a really broad term and may lead to many different and, probably, meaningless suggestions to the OP. If he can specify wich kind of fictions he likes maybe he will get better recommendations, I've read so many fiction books from different genres that it's really hard to choose one in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, while maybe not the "best" book ever written, is highly entertaining...

<comment><USER7> All of Neal Stephenson's books have a breezy sense of wonder and adventure with a dash of science-y cleverness.

<comment><USER8> If the OP is looking for a page turner, then Stephenson's Snow Crash is another great recommendation. Anathem was slower to me, and Reamde was good. But if I was to pick up Stephenson's stuff again I go to Snow Crash, then Cryptonomicon as my one, two.

<comment><USER9> The Baroque cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World is awesome as well. Who doesn't want to read fiction about The Royal Society, Isaac Newton and Liebniz mixed in with phrases in the line with "In memory of Englands greatest swordsman, beaten to death with a club by an Irishman". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Count of Monte Cristo for a great, rousing yarn

</comment><comment><USER11> A few on my "re-read every few years" list: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Speaker for the Dead, Infinite Jest, Watchmen, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

</comment><comment><USER12> Some favorites:

 _Pale Fire_ by Nabokov

 _Ulysses_ by Joyce

 _Et Tu, Babe_ by Leyner

 _Metamorphosis_ by Kafka (more a long story)

 _Things Fall Apart_ by Achebe

 _Hamlet_ and _Coriolanus_ by Shakespeare

 _The Code of the Woosters_ by Wodehouse

 _The Doorbell Rang_ by Stout

</comment><comment><USER13> Slaughterhouse 5, Snowcrash, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

</comment><comment><USER14> I have found books from Jon Evans very delightful and interesting to read:

1) Beasts of New York – <http://www.beastsofnewyork.com/>

2) Invisible Armies (thriller, drama, computer hacking) – <http://www.rezendi.com/invisibleArmies.htm>

Both books have their digital edition freely downloadable as well.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dune

1984

Would greatly help if you told us what type (or examples) of books you like.

<comment><AUTHOR> I purposely left it open-ended. I probably haven't read a fiction book in 15 years. I've been so heavy on business/marketing/tech/startup/biography books that I'm not even sure what fiction I would enjoy anymore.

Books I've enjoyed recently are Titan, Outliers, Blue Ocean Strategy. I think a portion of my burnout is losing my sense of fun - hence my general attitude towards fiction over the last decade+ has been it's fake and thus a waste of time. While I know that's not true (the waste of time part), it just hasn't been 'productive' to read a fiction book.

So I was just curious which fiction books everyone else enjoyed, and I was going to pick a couple from the list that was created.

<comment><USER7> Look for page-turners rather than literature as you're getting back into fiction. Business and popular non-fiction books these days are written in a very elementary style. I take nothing away from Malcolm Gladwell, but his writing style is very easy to read compared to many of the books we're suggesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Top three: _Mockingbird_ , by Walter Tevis; _Riddley Walker_ , by Russell Hoban; _Glimpses of the Moon_ , by Edith Wharton

Some other favorites: _The Dog Stars_ , by Peter Heller; _To Reign In Hell_ , by Steven Brust; _Machine Man_ , by Max Barry; _The Dawn Patrol_ , by Don Winslow; _The Woman_ , by Hank Ketchum

<comment><USER12> Read _Machine Man_ this year: very effective, really chilling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett is usually for me a good way to step back from everyday life and work. It's funny, there are many references to scientific and nerd culture and it helps to reconsider some "serious" things...

</comment><comment><USER18> I haven't read many books but till date I have never read a book better than The Godfather.

</comment><comment><USER19> _The Master of Hestviken_ , by Sigrid Unset (long forgotten, but she was a Pulitzer-winning author in the 1930's), is probably the best novel I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER20> A Song of Ice and Fire

</comment><comment><USER21> Sphere by Michael Crichton. I was quite young at the time, but I remember being completely engrossed. Please don't relate it to the movie version :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Loved this book when I was younger. Fascinating read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Contact by Carl Sagan. I first read it as an adult and it took my breath away. The movie was a fair adaptation.

Also, I like to read Ender's Game once a year or so.

</comment><comment><USER22> Crime and Punishment, Les Miserables, War and Peace

<comment><USER23> Since you're going with "classics" I'd add:

* Les Liaisons dangereuses

* The Count of Monte Cristo

Plus my personal picks; Taltos the assassin, Chronicles of Amber, Dune & LoTR.

<comment><USER7> All the nerds I know (which is basically everybody I know) like the Vlad Taltos books. As long as you're OK with dragons, sarcasm, and crime you should like them, too.

<comment><USER23> I just hope he comes back to the Lady Teldra plot sometime soon. The last few books have left me hanging for almost as long as I can bear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Using best and favorite interchangeably as literature is a pretty subjective subject:

As a kid: Where the Red Fern Grows As an adult: The Dharma Bums

</comment><comment><USER25> _The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time_ and _A Spot of Bother_ both by Mark Haddon

 _The Corrections_ by Jonathan Franzen

</comment><comment><USER26> Catch 22.

<comment><USER8> Catch 22 is a fantastic read. I don't think I've read anything else where everything in the book is such a great illustration of its main theme. Plus, it's just plain entertaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> American Gods by Neil Gaiman is an amazing book.

</comment><comment><USER7> Neuromancer by William Gibson

</comment><comment><USER28> _To Kill a Mockingbird_

</comment><comment><USER29> It's been mentioned, but gotta second Crime and Punishment. Great.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reamde by Neal Stephenson,

Daniel Surez freedom (tm), deamon, and kill decision.

ready player one

anything by mark twain

</comment><comment><USER31> a couple favorites: classic: The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brian recent scifi: Stories of your life and others (short stories) by Ted Chiang

</comment><comment><USER32> "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren.

</comment><comment><USER10> A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

</comment><comment><USER33> Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoj

</comment><comment><USER34> Joyce Carol Oates.</comment>


An Entrepreneurial Success Story  - <AUTHOR> http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com/2012/05/entrepreneurial-success-story.html

<comment><USER2> Hi Chris,

As always, it was a great post. Btw, Are you still open to Advisor opportunities?

Thanks,</comment>