How much we still don't know about Watergate and the Nixon Administration - <AUTHOR> http://daily.jstor.org/watergate-nixon-administration/ <comment><USER2> Anyone who would argue that restrictions on government power aren't important, that surveillance isn't an issue, and you don't have to worry if you have nothing to hide should review the events described here.

Even if someone isn't abusing a particular _right now_ , odds are very good that someone will come along who will. It's much better that the power doesn't exist in the first place.

<comment><USER3> If Watergate happened now (the parts of it that are public), I think the majority of Americans would not be upset. I think the president could literally say "when the president does it, it's not illegal" and the majority of Americans (okay, maybe only the majority of Americans of the same party as the president) wouldn't bat an eye.

<comment><USER4> Breaking and entering would be viewed as "okay" by the majority of Americans? I seriously doubt that would be the case. The reason: it's something that normal people are put into jail for. Now, going to war on false pretenses? They get away with that, for sure, because it's not something in the experience of anyone but a POTUS. People can't relate. B&E people relate.

<comment><USER5> People here are currently ok with summarily executing suspected foreign persons and innocent civilians with remote controlled airplanes that launch "hellfire" missiles...

What exactly do you mean by your question?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Further evidence against the disinformation that the government can't keep secrets or any horrible stuff happening right now would be leaked. I've written counter-points to that in the past. I referenced MKULTRA's, others the stay-behind armies (eg Gladio), and most recently programs with at least a few hundred people where only around four (esp Snowden) talked. Others have the information get out through third parties (esp reporters) while getting no coverage in or smeared by media. Recently, we've seen that whistleblowing on executive is itself treated like a crime.

So, it's clear that the more dangerous and professional of the military/intelligence/LEO community can effectively keep secrets or do damage control. They have plenty successes for every screwup. Dare I say that all the people with clearances vs number of damaging leaks show their method works well enough if only because of good people participating.

So, transparency, whistleblower protection, and strong accountability (esp w/ GAO) are absolutely essential. Further, anyone hiding information in one of these investigations should be, if this is proven, hit with life in a harsh prison immediately. Further, a plan of action to split the media from CIA, etc influence needs to be formed and implemented. It will take such a strong combo to discourage the corruption we've seen for decades.

But first Americans have to give a shit enough to act. I've seen very little of that. The 2008 situation was a good example where Americans pay the crooks off w/ immunity and Icelanders took back their system with prison time on top. I'd like my country to act like a real democracy, too, which confronted with provable abuses we've seen over past 14 years. :)

<comment><USER7> Heck, Crypto AG is still in business. You can get thoroughly outed in the mainstream press and keep selling the same stuff. Amazing.

<comment><USER6> Great point lol. You might find the link below interesting, esp difference between redactions. Crypto AG's willingness to subvert equipment isn't debatable at this point. Courtesy of my fellow high-security engineer and friend Clive Robinson.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33676028](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33676028)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As somebody who is interested in history, the Nixon administration has always fascinated me. The man was probably one of the most complex and dark people to become president. Because of Watergate, his administration is also probably the one that is most opened-up to the public (and to the historic record)

But before folks pile on to the guy (and he was widely hated), some things to keep in mind:

1) As far as taping conversations go, Nixon did nothing new. It's known that he simply carried on the tradition that LBJ, JFK, and Eisenhower before him did. Whatever happened to all of those tapes?

2) Before we go praising the Pentagon, I've read reports (I apologize for not being able to source them) that the Pentagon bugged civilian leadership. They almost certainly keep extensive dossiers on Congressional members and anybody in their civilian chain of command. Good luck getting eyes on any of that.

3) Nixon's problem was that he got caught doing something bad enough that crossed a political line. Lots of folks felt that he did nothing that others didn't do or try to do. Things like using the IRS for political hit jobs are perennials in DC. Using spies on reporters? Please. I can go back as far as Jefferson and show presidents using and attacking the press as they saw fit.

As the author points out, what concerns me a tremendous amount is the amount of information we _don 't know_ about all these other administrations -- up to and including our current one. With wholesale data collection underway against the American public, I would be astonished if 100 years from now it isn't widely known how many folks suffered invisibly from things far worse than Nixon ever did. The fall of Nixon was a harbinger of leaving an age of corrupt, small, overtly powerful presidents and entering an age of pervasive, huge, subtly powerful presidents. (Or rather, the system itself, which controls or is controlled by various presidents depending on their skills and staff capabilities)

If I'm still learning what Nixon did, 40 years later, what chance in hell do I have as a voter to make decisions about the value of any current or recent president? The office is so controlled by the political/governmental system and what we can know or not is so constrained, he might as well be anonymous.

<comment><USER9> _If I 'm still learning what Nixon did, 40 years later, what chance in hell do I have as a voter to make decisions about the value of any current or recent president?_

Your final point should be emphasized. Classification and secrecy make information so asymmetric that voting becomes of only symbolic importance - you just can't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Likely the reason this stuff is still classified at all is because it casts doubt on the legitimacy or appropriate conduct of the US Government.

This seems to me to be an entirely inappropriate reason for something to remain classified decades after it occurred.

<comment><USER11> Nixon was one of the worst US presidents of the modern era but is a pipsqueak compared to some of the gnarly, currently still in power, world leaders. America has to live up to a higher standard but the level of corruption ongoing in many countries make his offenses look quaint.

<comment><USER10> > make his offenses look quaint.

How do we know his offenses if the information is still mostly classified? Perhaps they do not make others seem quaint in comparison.

<comment><USER12> Well, Nixon doesn't appear to have been running a multi-decade pedophile sex ring, for example.

Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar.

<comment><USER10> It is absurd to take extreme practices done by others and use them as evidence of our own character.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you are up to it and want to go from Watergate day 0 to the end, in a completely linear fashion and with excruciatingly detailed day by day coverage of events, get a copy of "Watergate: Chronology of a Crisis". It's an anthology of the daily reporting by Congressional Quarterly, which was a sort of daily newspaper about the goings on about Congress.

It is a fascinating read. Watergate is one of those things that you think you understand and then, after reading in depth about it, you realize how complex the whole thing was. From the amount of people involved to the campaign finance part to the lengths Nixon's administration went in trying to combat what they perceived as threats to the nation. It's something that is often forgotten, but many of the limits regarding campaign finance and executive power we have (had) today stem from the aftermath of Watergate.

An interesting outcome I experienced after reading the aforementioned anthology was the feel I got for Nixon as a person. I found myself almost admiring him. Say what you will about his methods, and they were dubious at best, the guy was dedicated to his principles.

<comment><USER14> Why did they perceive it as a threat to the nation? because it gave opportunities to the USSR ?

<comment><USER15> Nixon said once[1] in all seriousness: "If the president does it, that means it's not illegal." Reminiscent of Louis XIV: "I am the state."

Anything that was a threat to the Nixon administration in their view was ipso facto a threat to the nation.

1\. [http://www.streetlaw.org/en/Page/722/Nixons_Views_on_Preside...](http://www.streetlaw.org/en/Page/722/Nixons_Views_on_Presidential_Power_Excerpts_from_a_1977_Interview_with_David_Frost)

<comment><USER16> Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman told a journalist that the main purpose of the War on Drugs was to attack Nixon's "enemies" and that they knew the WOD was based on lies about drugs:

> "You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in > 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar > Left, and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't > make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the > public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and > then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We > could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and > vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying > about the drugs? Of course we did."

[http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war- on...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/the-war-on-drugs-how- president-nixon-tied-addiction-to-crime/254319/)

<comment><USER17> That quote doesn't appear in the linked article. Did you intend to link to a different source?

<comment><USER18> It appears it was published offline, and the original source is _The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-changing Stories. Edited by Larry Smith, Harper Perennial, 2012._

See [http://waliberals.org/the-ugly-origin-of-the-war-on- drugs/20...](http://waliberals.org/the-ugly-origin-of-the-war-on- drugs/2012/06/21/)

There doesn't appear to be a copy of this online anywhere I can verify it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've been greatly enjoying Rick Perlstein's Nixonland [[http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing- Am...](http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing- America/dp/074324303X)], which traces the rise of modern Republicanism and is full of interesting anecdotes about this deeply weird man. I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't old enough to have survived Nixon firsthand.

<comment><USER20> I greatly enjoy Dick:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144168/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144168/)

<comment> vezzy-fnord I'm disappointed this wasn't about Dick Tuck.

<comment><USER20> Wow; just wow. Thank you for filling that gaping hole in my education with Dick Tuck [1] [2]! My new short duration personal savior [2].

Speaking of favorite ShorDurPerSavs: John Gage [4], who was Sun Microsystem's "Science Officer" and turned the Sun logo 45 degrees on its corner, had the honor of serving his country on Nixon's enemies list [5] -- a distinguished achievement that L. Ron Hubbard falsely claimed about himself!

"I didn't hide what I did. I never tried to be malicious. It's just the difference between altering fortune cookies to make a candidate look funny and altering State Department cables to make it look as if a former President were a murderer." \--Dick Tuck on the difference between himself and Nixon's Watergate operatives.

"The people have spoken, the bastards." \--Dick Tuck's concession speech following his loss in the 1966 California State Senate election.

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

[2] [http://hoaxes.org/tuck.html](http://hoaxes.org/tuck.html)

[3] [http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/goods/shordurpersavs/X0012_...](http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/goods/shordurpersavs/X0012_ShorDurPerSav_Lesson.html)

[4] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/suns-gage-looks- ahead/](http://www.zdnet.com/article/suns-gage-looks-ahead/)

[5] [http://www.enemieslist.info/enemy.php?ID=463](http://www.enemieslist.info/enemy.php?ID=463)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Along this vein, for anyone interested in the conspiracy theories pertaining Nixon (as well as Kennedy and Bush Senior), I found Dark Legacy[1] really interesting. I don't know if any of it is true, and I've never taken the time to research any of the facts therein (far too many), so I cannot recommend it as information, per se, but if some of what's in there is true, then Nixon, et al, were engaged in something much worse than just politically inspired crimes like breaking and entering and stealing. I'd love to hear what somebody else thinks about the movie after watching it.

1\. [http://thedarklegacy.com](http://thedarklegacy.com) is the official website, but I watched it on Netflix

</comment><comment><USER21> How secure was that deletion of the tape? Has anyone taken 21st century technology and tried to recover what was on it?

<comment><USER22> We're talking about recording equipment used by the President, not an average Dictaphone tape. It was likely erased VERY thoroughly.

<comment><USER23> We're talking about 40-year-old technology, though. Modern forensic tools are extremely powerful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was intrigued the editor of the Washington post was a drinking buddy of Mother aka James Angelton and had been expelled from France

</comment><comment> bmir-alum-007 De rigueur mention: recall Aaron Schwartz was charged by feds under CFAA for spidering journals via JSTOR.

R.I.P. @aaronsw

PS: I received a stern warning as an ugrad at a UC uni for `wget -m ...` Oracle DBMS documentation (ugh, closed payware) using an http proxy back to the dorms, even though it still was on frick'n campus. Anyone that foists payware on students in a university when decent open-source alternatives exist should be hanged in the quad and left to rot.

</comment><comment><USER25> Who cares?

Still don't know anything about Benghazi either.

Point is, you can find out a lot about a person by whether or not they are angered by Watergate or Benghazi. But in reality, it's the jobs, stupid. Taxes. The American Dream. Get over it.</comment>


Is Bayesian A/B Testing Immune to Peeking? Not Exactly - <AUTHOR> http://varianceexplained.org/r/bayesian-ab-testing/ <comment><USER2> All this talk about _optional_ stopping has reminded me of a related concept/problem, _optimal_ stopping[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_stopping)</comment>


Canada might hold Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of parliament - <AUTHOR> https://gimtae.com/canada-might-hold-mark-zuckerberg-in-contempt-of-parliament/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20025871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20025871).

</comment><comment><USER3> Supposing they were held in contempt, what does that mean?

I've seen this story a couple of times now and both sources had the quote, "Nobody is going to come with some handcuffs and arrest them, but to be held in contempt by an entire country would not serve any platform well."

I would assume that there would be some punishment though, otherwise what power does a summons really have? Or is it just assumed that the market will punish Facebook because users won't want to use the service of a founder who has been held in contempt of parliament?

<comment><USER4> It's really hard to say because Parliament wields extraordinary powers. It once found the Government itself in contempt, triggering an election; IIRC, the only time that's ever been done was in Canada.

In the few other times contempt charges have been laid no punishment was applied, at the discretion of Parliament, or Parliament dissolved before any punishments were prescribed.

What's really fun to consider is that Parliament could apply criminal charges upon Zuck, and the USA may have to arrest and extradite him.

<comment><USER5> I highly doubt America would ever extradite for such an issue. It is not a crime for an American citizen to refuse to appear in another nation before the assembly of another nation. Other nations may not legislate for or compel citizens of America.

Most importantly, extradition requires the crime to be illegal in both nations. This is not. Contempt of Canadian parliament is not a crime on American soil, whereas something like murder is.

<comment><USER6> I don't think Meng from Huawei was committing a crime that was illegal in China yet the USA still had her held and extradited from Canada.

<comment><USER7> She hasn't been extradited yet. Her defence say:

> her case should be tossed anyway because: her arrest was an abuse of > process; the fraud charge she is facing in the United States is for a crime > that doesn't exist in Canada; and the U.S. government's extradition request > represents an 'abuse of power'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the biggest issues with social network is when you scale from a specific region to global scale. For example - carrying a weapon (for safety or religious reasons) could be totally normal in certain parts of the world but now when you put that on a global scale it can cause lot of conflicts in views of other people because they may not find it OK. This is something all social networks have failed to address on bigger scale.

Going after company executives is not going to solve this problem, maybe they should try to force companies to address these issues.

</comment><comment><USER9> Please cite a serious source for "news" like this.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/27/tech/zuckerberg-contempt- cana...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/27/tech/zuckerberg-contempt- canada/index.html)</comment></comment>


Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-28/don-t-blame-divorce-on-money-ask-did-the-husband-have-a-job?utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-business <comment><USER2> If we realize that the legal system has made the wife essentially a stockholder who is entitled to a stream of dividends from her marriage, and who has a right to sell when she sees fit, it's no surprise that women choose to sell when there is a sustained decline in earnings.

<comment><USER3> I used to be bothered by lots of stuff. All the dying, the diseased, the suffering, the doomed... Luckily, this is all just a product of our political system, and if you have a problem with that then you're quite simply a goddamn communist.

<comment><USER4> You have disagreed with me, so you're a racist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is > the husband's employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, > husbands who aren't employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting > divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed > full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to > break up.

Interesting. I'd be curious to see how the hours spent at work impact that number.

Specifically, do longer hours away at the office lead to a more stable marriage? Will having a second (or third!) job increase my chances of maintaining a nuclear family?

<comment><USER6> I imagine there are a lot factors.

Time spent together skyrocketing, financial instability causing stress, and the fact that a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly.

Becoming unemployed is immensely turbulent in pretty much every way.

<comment><USER7> I was wondering why men tie their identity to employment so much. Is it because society expects them to be providers, and ridicules men who don't ?

<comment><USER6> I'd assume so. As much as HN likes to ridicule the notion of "the patriarchy," this is a component of it that's awfully harmful to men.

<comment><USER8> HN ridicules the notion of patriarchy because the word itself implies it's somehow men's fault. Which it isn't. Social toles are enforced by most of the society, so we might as well call it "matriarchy", but that would piss feminists off, so we don't.

<comment><USER6> I don't think there's that implication at all. I think what's happening is that this component of patriarchy isn't really a rallying point for many people. That is, there are a lot of people who are vocally upset about _other_ components of patriarchy in which men actually _are_ the primary antagonists, e.g. rape culture. That does not, however, imply that man are the antagonists, _nor that women are the victims_ of every component of patriarchy.

I think more people should be pissed off about this component, too. A man shouldn't feel obligated to be masculine, nor a provider, nor a protector, nor anything he doesn't want to be. Truthfully, more of HN should empathize with this as well. I would be surprised if a very large portion of us didn't grow up being called a variety of epithets for being less athletic, more booky, less masculine and therefore less valuable than the general population.

Ironically enough, it's exactly _this_ component of patriarchy that leads to the aggressive anti-feminist views seen all over this board.

You can call it matriarchy if you want, I don't really care, except that a) no one will know what you're talking about and b) we don't live in a matriarchal society so it doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER9> What's happening is that, as you point out, people who claim to be fighting the patriarchy are _not_ in fact interested in fighting against problems where men are the ones being hurt rather than the antagonists. However, they lump both categories together under one "patriarchy" label as a way of demanding that they be treated as though they were tackling both, arguing that because men's problems are caused by the patriarchy and they're attacking it, they're the ones really trying to solve those problems.

In fact, I've seen them go even further and accuse people who make a fuss those problems of being the ones who don't actually care about them, because if they really cared they'd recognise that feminism was the movement that was actually trying to solve those problems and copy its approach of refusing to do anything about them. That, in fact, this proves that said activists are misogynists who are just out to attack feminism.

<comment><USER6> That's fair. I've never felt that I was being blamed for anything and every feminist I know (including myself) explicitly includes these types of issues in their scope of problems.

Obviously it seems Tumblr-inas get awfully large soapboxes to stand upon, but my personal experience indicates they are outliers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From personal experience I can confirm that finding. During the tech crash in 2002 I was unemployed for a year and it took several more years for me to get back to the salary and position I had had before the crash. I was frustrated and depressed by my failure to provide and my wife was frustrated with me too. This time damaged my marriage a lot and things never got back to how they had been previously.

<comment><USER11> _This time damaged my marriage a lot and things never got back to how they had been previously._

Wow, that sounds drastic. What happened?

<comment><USER12> Same boat, I was picking up almost any job to keep the family afloat, one time I got home and my partner was lying in the couch and crying. I thought it was the impending hardships we were going through so i cuddled and talked her into believing good times were ahead.

Her response was "baby I'm pregnant and I'm not sure its yours"

The rest is history. Luckily I bounced back, the boy was mine but phew..!

<comment><USER7> That doesn't sound like a healthy relationship.

<comment><USER13> For what definition of "healthy"? Few marriages are perfect, and many are quite broken in many respects. Stress drives people to do all sorts of things they might later regret. But if an affair is unhealthy, by that definition literally _most_ marriages are.

<comment><USER7> Stress doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your actions. Most marriages being degrees of unhealthy doesn't equate to most marriages having affairs in them. If my husband had an affair, child or no child, It would be an instant divorce. I could never trust him again.

<comment><USER14> I agree with you. No relationship is roses all the time, and cheaters will eventually find an excuse to cheat.

<comment><USER13> I think "cheaters gonna cheat" is overly reductive and crass. The point is that if most marriages are unable to deal with infidelity, then most marriages will fail. But the divorce rate has been declining for some time now, perhaps due to more modern approaches to human fallibility.

Again, this has nothing at all to do with excusing an affair, or abdicating responsibility. It's really examining and appreciating that many marriages are faced with these very serious challenges, and perhaps it's a sign of _strength_ , dare I say _health_ , in a marriage that it can continue on after an affair rather than collapsing at the mere thought.

EDIT: Keep in mind we can also speak more generally about affairs both romantic or sexual. It is interesting how many people just equate it to a sex act.

<comment><USER14> >I think "cheaters gonna cheat" is overly reductive and crass.

I disagree, obviously. It's trendy to expect people are merely the sum of their circumstances, and that they'll cheat if a and b and c are true. I don't believe it. People with character don't cheat on their spouses. It's really that simple. You can be a marriage with "very serious challenges" and not cheat, even when the opportunities are all around. Millions of people do it.

>...and perhaps it's a sign of strength, dare I say health, in a marriage that it can continue on after an affair rather than collapsing at the mere thought.

Yes, the "mere thought" and _action_ of the ultimate betrayal. I'm not buying it. Whatever they say, people who stay together after an affair are making a calculation. It's for the kids, or it's over money, or the cheated-on spouse is afraid to be alone. Oh, _sign me up_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have personally witnessed couples where the cause of the job loss was marital stress. Husband's job performance suffered because of things going on at home, company decides to cut back jobs, stressed husband is on the low end of performance and gets cut. It just adds to the mess at that point. Often the wife felt that the husband was less than he was before without his job, and ditched him.

I've also seen men in that situation who bounce back professionally _after_ a divorce. Usually not immediately, but relatively short term (1 to 5 years).

The correlation is not that surprising, but I agree with others here who note that it is not provable as causation. Too many factors.

<comment><USER16> >I've also seen men in that situation who bounce back professionally after a divorce. Usually not immediately, but relatively short term (1 to 5 years).

That makes a lot of sense. That 1 to 5 year period may be due to depression, despondency and general lack of motivation. If they get through that there may well be strong motivation to rebuild yourself. Plus, if you no longer have a spouse and children waiting at home there is no one to complain if you start putting in extra hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not working right now and my wife is supporting me. To be brief, I'm taking time to be healthier mentally and my wife can see that I'm making a concerted effort. I let her know frequently how much I appreciate it, and I'm also accomplishing a lot and putting myself in a position to be successful again in the near future. I've supported her financially at times in the past as well.

Because of this, we're actually in a very good place in our relationship. I had put a lot of stress on her by being manic, obsessive, paranoid (not about her or our relationship), constantly using, etc. We've both noticed the improvement and have been more introspective and open about what causes us to argue. Anyway, just a counter-anecdote to the top comment.

<comment><USER18> constantly using?

<comment><USER19> He is likely referring to hard drugs of some sort. "Using" connotes methamphetamines or heroin.

<comment><USER17> No meth or heroin for the last many years. I never liked either much anyway. I've referring mostly to psychedelic drugs and marijuana, which normally are considered soft, but I've consumed them to a degree that would probably shock most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It can go the other way as well. It would be interesting to study any change in the percentage of divorces in households where incomes/assets increased. In my case, I sold a business for a tidy sum, which then allowed us to divorce without financial difficulties. It is true that a lot of marriages unhappily continue because either party is unable to financially support themselves alone, especially when kids are involved.

</comment><comment><USER21> Whenever someone I know is breaking up I ask, "Money or sex?". It's always one of these reasons.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I've heard this before from recent divorcees. But in a more stricter form of; marriages end in divorce when the wife doesn't get enough money or the man doesn't get enough sex. Horribly stereotypical, sexist, and crude but does seem to aptly describe the proximate cause of many divorces.

<comment><USER8> I can see "stereotypical", but why "sexist"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be interesting if one could predict a likelihood of divorce based upon a number of inputs, like credit scores, age differences, education levels, income, hours worked, number of children, smoking, etc. I suppose the possible set of criteria could be large.

</comment><comment><USER23> The couples income and wife's economic independence did _not_ correlate to divorce (post 1970s). Which implies that the lack of a full time job is not a proxy for "money worries" but instead seems to be a proxy for something else - potential the husbands behaviour, wife / social perceptions of husband etc.

Basically I infer that couoles pull together when faced with external financial stress, but if the husbands a dick about his job it's a different matter

<comment><USER24> > if the husbands a dick about his job it's a different matter

I'm not sure why you're convinced that the husband's behavior is the causal link (if there is one: the headline implies there is though the study only shows a correlation). I find it just as easy to imagine that, just as gender roles downplay women's potential contributions in the workforce, they reduce men to workhorses in family and relationships. It could just as easily be the wife being a dick about having an unemployed husband (as the article mention, financial strain per se was controlled for). I personally had a friend in high school who had really rich parents and whose dad retired early and was a stay- at-home dad (his mom was employed as an executive at a big bank). I would hear about him getting shit for being stay-at-home dad despite the fact that everybody in the family (himself included) was really happy with the arrangement.

</comment></comment><comment> alex- Maybe people in unhappy marriages find the strain leaks into their professional lives?

</comment><comment><USER25> Anecdotally, every household I know who has gotten divorced had one of two deciding factors; either they didn't get along, or there was infidelity.

<comment><USER24> "They didn't get along" hides a lot of complexity, since a lot of concrete things can put strain on a relationship and then the couple "doesn't get along". In fact, this practically reduces to a tautology, since deciding to get a divorce means that you're goiong through something severe enough that staying together isn't considered to be the better option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Well we know women choose men based on how likely they'll be to commit and properly provide to her offspring. So I guess it's not much of a surprise there. What I think is surprising, is that it seems society looks at women as the victim of a divorce, when this is telling a different story where women have a plan of when to exit.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find the correlation-causation discussion a bit troubling.

What if, for instance, men who want a divorce manage to quit working/become involuntarily unemployed because they don't want their incomes going toward alimony for a spouse they now dislike?

Or what if it's like those initial studies linking low body weight with high mortality, which we found were mixing together healthy skinny people and people who'd lost a lot of weight due to cancer? Maybe men who are involuntarily unemployed are drawn from a mix of guys with bad luck and guys with traits that cause them to be less stably employed?

How do these decisions fluctuate or not with the national unemployment rate?

It seems like this is an interesting exploratory study but not yet very specific.

</comment><comment><USER28> "Results from models with alternative cutpoints at 1980 and 1985 are shown in the online supplement."

Does anyone have a link to the online supliment?

Also would it be normal practice for a study like this to make the raw data aviailable? I'd love to take a look. As it's not totally clear how the 3.3% figure was arrived at.

This sentence struck me as a little odd: "For example, I use employment from 1985, reported in survey year 1986, to predict marital dissolution in 1987"

I would have thought unemployment in the actual year of divorce would be more important when looking for a corellation? Not looking at the husband's unemployemnt two years previously?

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone have a link to the actual study?

<comment><USER30> [http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/attach/journals/au...](http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/attach/journals/aug16asrfeature.pdf)

<comment><USER29> Thanks Alex!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's the worst thing about this... if you are married, and working on your pre-revenue startup as a solo founder out of the house... that is another description of a person that we call "unemployed". Whoops, yeah that part of building a business, we do not talk about so much. :-/

</comment><comment><USER31> A man without a job is much more unbearable than a man without money.

</comment><comment><USER32> Solid proof that there's little loyalty beyond whatever's attached to a wallet.

Love is a plaything for deluded teenagers.

</comment><comment><USER33> How am I not surprised?

<comment><USER34> To quantify it, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's a disappointing article in that it makes many narrowly focused and unfounded assumptions and one conclusion.

I've recently been doing an indepth study of sexism in Australia starting at 1970.

I've poured over archives (and I'm documenting it) to see how Australia went off the rails with its sexist attitude (eg. Domestic Violence is male only, or a revised false history of voting-who could and when).

What I have noticed is that there were plenty of ads and articles back in the early 70s (eg. One bank advertised its female branch manager with a large photo, quite proudly) that are inclusive, unlike today. TV adverts had plenty of representation in work, sport, etc. watch the "life be in it" as an example.

I know that there was an inclusive attitude back in the early 70s that we have lost. As an example, check out Science Week, aimed at kids, that has several girls only events and competitions. This sort of sexism was unprecedented from 1970-2000 (and possibly earlier). Also add that all of my female ancestors from 1900 onward held good jobs and were largely financially independent (which contradicts the article saying it didn't really happen before 1975). I've never been able to reconcile the modern story compared to my own family's history. It might be luck.

So, the article concluded that the difference is that women can now work. It ignores depression, stress (non financial), Boredom, lack of self-worth etc. if a person defines themself by a career and that career vanishes, it can turn an individual and their family upside down. I'm not surprised the authors focussed on housework and financial independence and ignored almost everything else as it seems to be the modern trend (ala domestic violence is male only).

I'm curious to see if any media outlets in Australia pick up on the blatant sexism of Science Week (targeted at kids). The last 10 years are proving to be the most sexist (by far) that I've ever seen. I'm doing some research by looking at government, education (which is largely government) and media. I will include photos, videos and loads of references - but it's a big job. It will take time when I am committed to work and family too.

<comment><USER36> Aiming STEM programs at girls isn't sexist. That just isn't what "sexist" means. Those programs exist to correct an imbalance caused by actual sexism.

<comment><USER37> _Aiming STEM programs at girls isn 't sexist. That just isn't what "sexist" means._

To the contrary, it perfectly fits the dictionary definition: Discrimination on the basis of gender.

It happens to be a form of discrimination which is (generally) considered to be acceptable since it is aiming to ameliorate a disadvantaged group; but it is discrimination nonetheless. The relevant question isn't "is this sexist", but rather "is this sexist in a way that society does not condone".

<comment><USER36> You might say that programs that encourage girls are "discriminatory" in some pedantic sense, but they don't keep boys from learning about math and science, nor do they discourage boys from going into STEM fields.

The difference between this and actual sexism is that sexism _discourages_ and systematically _excludes_ people, typically girls/women, based on gender. Programs that target girls do nothing at all to discourage boys, because no one is saying, "These kinds of activities, careers, etc are only for girls now."

Generally speaking, when any disadvantaged group gets together to discuss issues and take action on issues affecting them, they are not being racist, sexist, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't know what the laws are in the US regarding divorce but there's an astonishing imbalance in favour of women in many EU countries that causes marriages to be an unacceptable risk for me and many other men.

You can get divorced for no cause (no infidelity, financials are fine and you didn't do anything else wrong) and you'll be forced to hand over 40% of your net income to your ex-wife for the rest of your life. (even if there are no children - if there are, you get to pay even more)

I'm fine with women leaving for no cause (it's her business) and also with financially supporting children (as probably most men are) but I'm not going to sign a contract that could potentially leave me financially broke for no cause.

So even though the Harvard study might give some insight to married men on what they could do better I doubt that marriage under the current framework will even exist in a few decades.

<comment><USER39> > I'm fine with women leaving for no cause (it's her business) and also with > financially supporting children (as probably most men are)

My mother's parents divorced acrimoniously.

She told me that her mother was constantly fighting to receive child support checks. They were always late, any disputes that could be raised were raised, etc.

When she went off to college, the checks were assigned to her rather than her mother. And, like magic, they arrived on time and in full, with never a word of complaint.

I think a majority of men are indeed quite willing to support their children financially, even children they don't see much. But money extracted from you by a court and handed over to your ex-wife to be spent however she sees fit is something a little different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Poor journalism, yet again.

Factor implies causal link. It's just a correlation in this case.

<comment><USER41> I view it as the study went looking for X, and to it's surprise didn't see X, but happened to see statistical significance in Y. However the study did not have the scope to determine why Y occurred.

I think the most likely thing that changed over time is Z: the first wave(s) of feminism began to liberate females from the traditional limitations of roles in society. However the true from of feminism is a recognition and reconstruction based around /all/ gender roles being bad for mental health, emotional health, and positive relations among individuals.

Men haven't had that liberation; a large part of society still believes in specific roles and responsibilities for men that coupled females are (at their option) exempted from. This probably leads to increased stress to both individuals and also an increased risk of negative feedback loops for the situation and everyone involved.

The inherent bias in society is even reflected in the premise of the study. It's tracking a specific type of male/female relationship and a specific correlation of role towards problems. Instead a more balanced study would look at the starting condition, determine what percentage of the population (restricting to males and females alone is OK, but including all sets of couples is better) fits different configurations, and tracking for outcomes as well as associated economic, emotional, mental, and physical health in the related intervals would be a better study design. The study might also have a follow-up for 'marriage failure' cases where isolation of the root causes is performed.

<comment><USER42> > Men haven't had that liberation; a large part of society still believes in > specific roles and responsibilities for men that coupled females are (at > their option) exempted from. This probably leads to increased stress to both > individuals and also an increased risk of negative feedback loops for the > situation and everyone involved.

Sadly that role restructuring, when driven by men, is still almost universally derided. Look at the men's rights movement or mgtow. The trope of the basement dwelling virgin is immidately deployed to minimize their concerns. Feminism isn't the tool needed. Men need to drive their role in society. Society just isn't ready for it.

EDIT: heavily down voted, almost makes my point for me.

<comment><USER43> I would say you are getting down voted because the MRM seems to be not limited to trying to make things better for men but also endless attacking women and creating stawman(woman) feminism.

Men do face many challenges. Some men have dangerous jobs which they die providing for society (fishing, war, etc). This doesn't get enough acknowledgement. But one doesn't have to be a total jerk to make this point and tear others down.

<comment><USER44> > the MRM seems to be not limited to trying to make things better for men but > also endless attacking women

?? Are you implying that feminism _is_ limited to just helping women? Surely you're not that naive. If we were to play a game where each time you post a crazy thing an MRA has said, I have to post two crazy things feminists have said, I'll win that game. I'll win it easily. I'll win it with politicians and academics and people who have real power in our society while you'll be scouring fringe websites. And if ever I run low on important people, I still have the Tumblr feminists.

So yeah, I don't really know what point you thought you were making, unless the point was to demonstrate the totally different standard that you hold these groups to.

If you think feminism has legitimacy (and it most certainly does) it's because you're choosing to listen to the points that have merit, and disregard those that don't. It's selection bias, sure, but I do it too.

Consider trying the same thing with three MRM

<comment><USER45> The points that have merit constitute the bulk of the message coming from people self-identifying as feminists. Sure, there's all kind of weird stuff - TERFs, separatist and even supremacist feminists etc - but they're a minority compared to the mainstream.

On the other hand, when looking at the MRA scene (again, going by self- identification of the speakers), the mainstream seems to consist of "incels", red pillers, and the like. So, as far as most people are concerned, the label is firmly associated with that sort of stuff. Consequently, suggestion to listen to "points that have merit", when they come in a binder with "MRA" on the cover, is not going to fly. If you want to be heard, you'll have to break the association by using a different label - or by finding enough like-minded vocal associates to reclaim the label (and at this point it would need to be a supermajority with a hefty margin before we can seriously start talking about this).

You might object that this is unfair, because the label is descriptive and appropriate, and all those misogynists have misappropriated it. Tough luck - descriptive labels get misappropriated all the time. For example, if you happen to be a socialist and a civic nationalist at the same time, a common sense descriptive label would be "national socialist" \- but you really shouldn't be using it for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER46> What "message" are you talking about?

I've associated feminism with "women make $0.67 for every dollar that a man makes for the same job, working the same hours" and equal gender ratio over equal opportunity.

<comment><USER47> Based on numerous conversations I've had with self-identifying feminists, I would say the primary message seems to be that a person's gender (regardless of what it is) shouldn't decide their opportunities in life. Opinions on the extent or existence of systemic societal discrimination against women tend to depend largely on individual experience (and admittedly, on occasion, misinterpreted and badly gathered statistics) I think. And of course, there are as many versions of feminism as there are feminists because no two people are exactly alike.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


10 IT positions ranked by prestige - <AUTHOR> http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-it-positions-ranked-by-prestige/2347 <comment><USER2> as a programmer, i wish i ranked in the second position, but really i feel closer to the help desk :(</comment>


Ask HN: What narrow field should I master? - <AUTHOR> In order to improve my job options, I'm looking to study (even master) something that not many people know, and can give me a significant advantage in finding good jobs (maybe even as a consultant).<p>My background is in web development. I know JavaScript and AngularJS really well, but I'm full stack and willing to get into any field in software... <comment><USER2> Well, since you know Angular, why not master it? Learn its quirks, how it differs from other frameworks, strengths and weaknesses, it's internals and how it works internally. It's seldom to find someone who can fully explain how a framework works. Keep yourself up to date with its developments, contribute to it.

Or you could master JavaScript instead. Keep yourself with up to date with the upcoming standards, know its quirks, potential uses and even formulate creative uses with the new APIs. Personally, I would go with this as you will be flexible in any environment that runs JS, framework or no framework, browser or some other platform.

Since JS is not just limited to the web, there's a bunch of other fields to explore. Not all are for finding new jobs, but knowing them could add sugar to your portfolio.

\- Robotics, there's the Tessel.

\- If you're into type-hinted JS, then there's TypeScript.

\- Embedding JS in a microcontroller, there's MuJS.

\- Programming on mobile, there's PhoneGap.

\- Taking that further, where JS is your phone's platform, there's FirefoxOS.

\- Into game development, there's a lot of game engines for JS.

\- Desktop app development, there's NW.js

</comment><comment><USER3> While I cannot tell you what niche would be best for you personally, I would recommend making something impressive in the process of learning whatever it is you choose. At least then, if the area of expertise ends up being a bad bet, you would have something to show for it; and this portfolio item could live far longer than the specific knowledge you acquire. Another option would be to make the learning process a teaching experience (if you are not worried about sharing trade secrets), such as by writing educational blog posts in the process.

The sense of your question is very much akin to asking for investment advice. Both have the same problems of being a gamble and being prone to having recipients unwilling to divulge their secrets. If I were to provide one piece of advice on choosing, I would say choose a technology related to a field you would like to learn more about for personal, less technical reasons. That way you enjoy the learning and have a more certain feeling of accomplishment.

<comment><AUTHOR> But unlike investment, i'm not looking for insight what will be successful in the future. What is successful in the present will suffice...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Master what it takes to be a consultant. That's what you seem to want to do, and it's a better path than being an employee.

Attempting to get your first consulting gig will force you to master whatever you are missing specifically, instead of what you are looking for quasi- randomly.</comment>


Show HN: Draftalyzer – iOS Fantasy Football Draft app - <AUTHOR> http://www.front9technologies.com/draftalyzer-fantasy-football-decision-maker.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Draftalyzer uses custom algorithms to determine the likelihood that a player will be drafted before your turn to draft. It takes into account team rosters, project points per player, and bye weeks.

I originally made this app because I was frustrated doing in person Yahoo drafts and not having the drafted players immediately disappear from the available players list (I wanted to save trees so I didn't print lists of players and cross them off as they were drafted).

It then turned into Draftalyzer as I added more features. Any feedback is appreciated!</comment>


Joel Spolsky: Can your programming language do this? - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/01.html <comment><USER2> I think there's some reasonable stuff buried in here, I really do.

But... having actually spent some time in the trenches dealing with a hard problem on a massively parallel machine - more than once - I find it hard to believe that something like map/reduce or the like - or any given small-scale language feature is going to be particularly significant in terms of parallelizing any goddamn thing that's actually hard to do. I see a lot of fatuous claims that language feature X is the missing link in parallelism for the everyday working programmer but I don't see a lot of new solutions for anything hard as a proof of concept.

We've only had OpenMP and all sorts of other kludgy extensions for Fortran and C for what, about 15 years? I'm not saying that they're great or elegant or anything, but so many of the things that are hard about parallel programming are NOT FUCKING SOLVED BY MAP-REDUCE. Oops, sorry, shouty. But anything that can be solved by map-reduce wasn't enormously hard to begin with. Map-reduce was itself initially publicized in terms of 'less useful but easier for mere mortals than generalized parallel prefix' which made sense to me.

What doesn't make sense for me is all this frenzied enthusiasm for dragging parallel programming into the never-ending programmlng language abstraction wars; at least when the topics being discussed only touch on the very shallowest things needed by parallel programming. You want some respect, solve something hard.

Yes, you can do the same thing to each element of an array. Whaddya want, a cookie?

<comment><USER3> Here's the main Haskell hero, Simon Peyton Jones giving a talk about data parallel Haskell, which I think is a promising language abstraction to do _hard_ things with parallelism relatively easily:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWSZ4c9yqW8>

As for techniques that can be used now: Haskell's `par` and `pseq` combinators allow adding parallelization to "hard" code after-the-fact pretty easily.

<comment><USER4> Wasn't the promise of haskell the idea that parallelism would be implicit? What are operators like those doing there?

<comment><USER3> No, that was never "the promise" of Haskell.

Making automatic implicit parallelism in Haskell is trivial - but it will yield _too much_ parallelism and the overhead will trump the benefits.

The `par` and `pseq` combinators allow the programmer to specify which computations to parallelize explicitly to avoid parallelizing computations that are too small to be worth it and to allow the programmer to care for data-locality.

Despite being explicit, they are still far easier than other explicit parallelism mechanisms such as explicit threads because they are:

* So easy to throw in the program

* Guaranteed not to alter the semantics of your program - so you can just throw them in there and profile the performance changes -- and you know they won't break your program. They can alter the performance for better or worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Correction: The last time I used FORTRAN was 27 years ago. Apparently it got > functions.

FORTRAN had user-defined functions since FORTRAN II in 1958; see [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Fortran/10...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Fortran/102653989.05.01.acc.pdf) on page numbers 5, 14, and 15.

Joel unfortunately completely misses the point of why C and Java suck at this stuff: you can use functions as values in them (anonymous inner classes in Java) but _they aren't closures_. And his comment about automatically parallelizing "map" is a little off-base; if you take some random piece of code and stick it into a transparently parallel "map", you're very likely to discover that it isn't safe to run multiple copies of it concurrently, which is why languages like Erlang have a different name for the "parallel map" function. The "map" in MapReduce is _inspired by_ the function of that name in Lisp and other functional languages; it isn't a drop-in replacement for it.

As usual, while Joel's overall point is reasonably accurate, most of his supporting points are actually false to the point of being ignorant nonsense. I think someone could tell as good a story in as entertaining a way without stuffing it full of lies, although admittedly my own efforts fall pretty far short.

<comment><USER6> "Joel unfortunately completely misses the point of why C and Java suck at this stuff: you can define anonymous functions in them (anonymous inner classes in Java) but they aren't closures."

You can't define anonymous functions in C.

And I wouldn't "attack" Joel for "stuffing the article full of lies". It's more like "abstracting away the details". When people talk of the benefits of some practice or programming paradigm, they don't always mention all the work going into it - they just explain the concept. That's what a good teacher does, IMO. He takes complex concepts and explains the important parts.

<comment><USER5> > You can't define anonymous functions in C.

You are of course correct. I have corrected the parent post.

My point is, though, that you almost can't define anonymous functions in Python, either, but you can do nearly all of these clever patterns. The difference is that Python functions _are_ closures.

> And I wouldn't "attack" Joel for "stuffing the article full of lies". It's > more like "abstracting away the details".

I agree that that's what a good teacher does, but I don't see this article as doing that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it might be important to note that while the terms map and reduce do come from Lisp, they're not one-to-one with what these functions do in Lisp. The original MapReduce paper mentions the borrowing, but doesn't really go into specifics. There's a good paper by Ralf Lämmel that describes the relation that MapReduce has to "map" and "reduce" at [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.104....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.104.5859) . I liked this paper much better and found it the most informative functional explanation to MapReduce (note, it's in Haskell).

I think MapReduce is really part of a more general pattern where you have an (in more Haskell-y terms) unfold (anamorphism) to a foldr (catamorphism). If your operations on the items in your intermediate set of data in the MapReduce are associative/commutative, you can work out parallelization more or less for free. It's pretty cool stuff, and really not that complicated when you sit down and think about it.

<comment><USER8> Wow. Thank you. I wish I could upvote you more. I have never looked into Google's "MapReduce" but if what you say is true then my assumptions on it were completely wrong. I assumed it was 1-1 with map and reduce. But if it is generating a set of unfolds into 'essentially' fold (is it? I only skimmed the first pages due to time) then that is a very important detail and makes the name a bit of a misnomer. Why don't people make a bigger deal about this - unfold, fold is not harder but it requires a different mindset and approach than map fold.

If you are approaching it thinking it is just a map and fold then you are going in disadvantaged and will have to unlearn that fact to properly leverage something that is actually even more impressive/useful/powerful than a mare fold o map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article shows that Javascript is truly the common man's functional programming language. Despite its ugliness, it got lambdas/anonymous functions right.

<comment><USER10> As right as you can get them in an imperative programming language, perhaps, but the semantics of closing over environments containing mutable variables is still confusing to even the smartest of people (cf. [1]; it's about Python, but JavaScript has essentially the same nature in this regard).

[1] <http://math.andrej.com/2009/04/09/pythons-lambda-is-broken/>

<comment><USER11> Not ECMAScript Harmony! [1] And no, that isn't the definitive semantics of closing over mutable variables. It is one out of at least two possible semantics.

[1] <http://brendaneich.com/2010/11/paren-free/> \-- see the "Implicit Fresh Bindings" section.

<comment><USER10> Harmony's new _for in_ construct implicitly introduces a fresh let binding per iteration, yes, but it doesn't fundamentally change the language semantics with regard to the kind of example Eich mentions. So while one can, in Harmony, write code that behaves in the way that people like Andrej Bauer expect, it doesn't mean that the language's closure semantics have suddenly changed.

It's also hard for me to see how one could have a 'definitive' semantics _without_ having at least one alternative—not that I claimed that either JS's closure semantics were the only ones going. Presumably the alternative you mean is where the variables present in the local environment are copied on creation of a closure.

I'd also resist the idea that I claimed that JavaScript's closure semantics _were_ in some way definitive, although I can see how one might infer that from what I did write. That being said, given the potential problems with the alternative, I would claim that they're a reasonable choice.

<comment><USER11> _it doesn't mean that the language's closure semantics have suddenly changed._

Yes, but what are the issues with fresh let-bindings per iteration?

 _Presumably the alternative you mean is where the variables present in the local environment are copied on creation of a closure._

No, that's bad -- it leaves you unable to show that objects with mutable state are reducible to closures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Something that I only realised the other day which made me feel kinda embarrassed: in ruby, the reduce method is called inject.

For years I've been doing MapReduce functions, without realising it. MapReduce was in my mental pile of "genius things that cleverer people than me do, must be looked into when there is time."

For info on inject: <http://blog.jayfields.com/2008/03/ruby-inject.html>

<comment><USER13> In Ruby the reduce method is also called reduce:

        [1,2,3].inject{|s,i| s += i}
        => 6
        [1,2,3].reduce{|s,i| s += i}
        => 6

<comment><USER3> What would it do on an empty list? It should probably take an argument for the empty case...

What is the history behind the name "inject" here?

<comment><USER5> The name comes from Smalltalk. I imagine that the idea is that you're "injecting" an operator between items in the list: 1 2 3 4 becomes 1 + 2 + 3 + 4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even when I'm working in a language that doesn't have first class functions, I find it easier to lay out my code by writing functional pseudocode and then "unrolling" maps into loops, closures into structs/objects, compositions into a sequence of calls, etc. It probably leads to idiomatically awful Java, but I find it easier to read and write, and nobody else needs to deal with my code. So...

</comment><comment><USER15> Yup, any language I've worked with, including Java and C, can do that just fine. They just spread the verbosity differently. Organizing large projects is a pain in JavaScript, trivial in Java. Using anonymous functions is a pain in Java, trivial in JavaScript.

(Not so) fun fact: The public MapReduce services by Google and Amazon do not (directly) support JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER16> He gives reduce as an example of "purely functional programs have no side effects and are thus trivially parallelizable.", but reduce by definition is not trivially parallelizable.

<comment><USER17> Reduce is trivially parallelizable if you can ensure your operation is associative, but you have to work in languages like Epigram and Agda to guarantee that.

 _(retract "he's wrong")_

<comment><USER18> No, you just have to make sure the function you pass is associative.

Only in really strongly typed languages like Agda can you make the associativity constraint /part of the type/ of the function, and thus statically checked by the compiler; but it's perfectly reasonable to make it part of the specification of the function's behavior that it expects its argument to be associative. (Or, slightly more generally, that the order of reduction is unspecified; in which case only an associative function will produce a totally deterministic result.)

<comment><USER19> Even when you can't have a _proof_ of associativity in the type, it's perfectly reasonable to document the associativity requirement in types -- e.g. the Monoid typeclass in Haskell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone else just read this and realised they need to go off an learn some form of functional programming? I ignored it for such a long time because I felt it wasn't relevant to my current situation but I was wrong. You gain some incredible fundamental knowledge that you would otherwise be completely oblivious to.

Is lisp really the way to go though?

<comment><USER21> I would recommend Haskell over Lisp, because Haskell will _force_ you to do functional programming, where-as Lisp is less rigid in that regard. In addition the #haskell IRC channel on FreeNode is filled with people who have infinite patience with Haskell newbies and it has an excellent introductory text at <http://learnyouahaskell.com/>

About two years ago I decided to learn Haskell. Had about 4 false starts and didn't "get" it until my 5th attempt, at which point I figured out what the type system _meant_ and had a bit of a Matrix "I know kung fu!"-moment. Two years of hanging around in #haskell later, I know a billion more things about programming/programming languages and learned type theory (although I still don't grok all conversations there :p).

Some other comments on the usefulness of Haskell:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145743>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1145743>

<comment><USER22> You may also have luck learning FP with Erlang. It's also functional, but approaches it from a different direction, focusing on reliability and concurrency rather than types and purity. Between Haskell and Erlang, one of them will probably fit your mind better.

I started FP with OCaml, but OCaml makes it too easy to continue writing imperative code when you're actively trying to learn new idioms.

<comment><USER21> I agree Erlang is also very interesting. I think some of the features looks absolutely fascinating (hot updatable code!), etc. I just haven't found the the time to learn it yet.

I wish Erlang's syntax was more like Haskell, though :\

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> FTA:

 _The very fact that Google invented MapReduce, and Microsoft didn't, says something about why Microsoft is still playing catch up trying to get basic search features to work_

I don't believe this is true, and that's easy to prove: There was parallelism of SELECTs in SQL Server 2000. So there is a part of MS that is perfectly happy with the idea, even in another bit of MS isn't. They just need to talk more...

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, it can! Scala:

      def Cook(i1: String, i2: String, f: String => Unit) {
        println("get the " + i1)
        f(i1)
        f(i2)
      }

      Cook("lobster", "water", x => println("pot " + x))
      Cook("chicken", "coconut", x => println("boom " + x))

      List(1,2,3).sum
      List(1,2,3).mkString
      List(1,2,3).map(println) // or more verbose List(1,2,3).map(x => println(x))

</comment><comment><USER25> Today I tried to explain someone what exactly boost::mpl::fold does and how it is supposed to be used (For those unfamiliar: boost::mpl is a collection of compile-time metaprogramming mechanisms for C++).

I took me a while to realize that the person I was explaining it to had only little problems with the templates and compile-time part but close to no idea what a fold or a lambda are.

Not knowing some basics of functional programming can keep a person from understanding so many different things and I have encountered those in different fields (e.g. explicitly like in formal semantics or implicitly in different theories of morphology).

I think the real point here is that different paradigms offer you new views onto the world and enhance your understanding all the programming language things aside.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think this could also be called 'can your brain think like this?'... Many programmers stray from thinking in a massive way and tend to problems with similar, familiar codebases.

<comment><USER9> Programmers are perfectly willing to think this way if you disguise it like this: <http://api.jquery.com/each/>

People are put off by esoteric and academic-sounding names like "first-class functions". But people will adopt it if you put it in a practical context.

<comment><USER27> It might even be the other way round. I have a (slightly) harder time teaching first-year students how to use the for loop in JavaScript than how to use anonymous functions in jQuery. I think it's a better match for how the brain works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone else think it's a travesty that the AP Computer Science curriculum is taught in Java? Java was my first programming language and I've spent the past 8 years trying to unlearn most of it

<comment><USER29> Java's not too bad for educational purposes; at least it has a rigid type system and checked exceptions, both of which makes it harder to ignorantly slam some code together and nugde it until it works.

<comment><USER28> "ignorantly slam some code together and nugde it until it works"

haha pretty sure I still do that most of the time...followed by rewriting everything and calling that "refactoring"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I remember my days as a CS student.

The single most mind-opening course I took was functional programming, where I learned LISP and Prolog.

That knowledge today is crucial as it deeply changed my mindset when tackling most any problem.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's funny that he mentions Google as an example of a company that gets the paradigm, but most of Google is C++ and Java. C# has better functional paradigm support than both of those.

<comment><USER32> The Google Search engine was at some point written in Python.

<comment><USER33> The crawler was in Python, not the search engine itself.

<http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html>

 _Both the URLserver and the crawlers are implemented in Python._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't like the way in line functions hurt the readability of code. Is there anything out there that solves that issue?

Also I haven't had an excuse to use it yet but F# seems to have great syntactic sugar for parallelizing things in a more natural way than the typical map reduce.

<comment><USER35> Inline anonymous functions don't have to look so funny. Here's an example in coffeescript that takes no arguments and performs a quick action: [https://github.com/dpritchett/chatbox/blob/master/public/cha...](https://github.com/dpritchett/chatbox/blob/master/public/chatbox.coffee#L54)

Explanation: After the 500ms textbox fadeIn finishes it fires a an anonymous callback function which calls a 3000ms fadeOut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I implemented these examples in Ruby 1.9, would love to know if there are more efficient ways of doing some of these:

        def cook(p1, p2, f)
          puts "get the " + p1.to_s
          f.call(p1)
          f.call(p2)
        end

        cook( "lobster", "water", lambda {|x| puts "pot " + x })
        cook( "chicken", "coconut", lambda {|x| puts "boom " + x })

        @a = [1,2,3]
        @a.map {|x| puts x*2}
        @a.map {|x| puts x}

        def sum(a)
          @a.reduce(0) do |a, b|
            a + b
          end
        end

        def join(a)
          @a.reduce("") do |a, b|
            a.to_s + b.to_s
          end
        end

        puts "sum " + sum(@a).to_s
        puts "join " + join(@a)

<comment><USER37> Here's one more efficient way... use perl!

      #!/usr/bin/perl

      use Modern::Perl;
      use List::Util 'reduce';

      sub cook {
        my ($i1, $i2, $f) = @_;
        say "get the $i1";
        $f->($i1);
        $f->($i2);
      }

      cook "lobster", "water",   sub { say "pot "  . shift };
      cook "chicken", "coconut", sub { say "boom " . shift };

      my @a = (1, 2, 3);

      map { say $_ * 2 } @a;
      map { say $_     } @a;

      sub my_sum {
        reduce { $a + $b } 0, @_;
      }

      sub my_join {
        reduce { $a . $b } "", @_;
      }

      say "sum "  . my_sum(@a);
      say "join " . my_join(@a);

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The moment I read this, I immediately thought of the work I performed on Cray's Chapel parallel language. Chapel has an elegant way of expressing functional parallel code like this that is much more difficult to write in Unified Parallel C and High Performance Fortran. In fact, one Google search later and I found a student's presentation on Chapel and MapReduce.

[http://www.slidefinder.net/l/l22_parallel_programming_langua...](http://www.slidefinder.net/l/l22_parallel_programming_language_features/29576692)

</comment><comment><USER39> Can Xcode 4 compile code using Objective-c blocks into iOS 3.x compatible binaries? This article made me realize how much I miss anonymous functions/lambda expressions from C# and javascript.

<comment><USER40> <http://code.google.com/p/plblocks/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> WOW, welcome to the year 1959.

<comment><USER42> We don't have coroutines yet. Maybe in another 5 years javascript make it all the way to 50 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think this article was my first introduction to functional programming.

Yea, don't look at me like that. My university mostly taught us Java/C++; we only did functional programming in one course.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Look! We're passing in a function as an argument. Can your language do this?"

Umm, yes it can....

#!/usr/bin/perl

sub cook_time { ($hours, $min) = @_; $result = "$hours hours and $min minutes\n"; return $result; }

sub animal { $animal = shift; return $animal; }

sub cook_animal { ($get_animal, $get_time) = @_; return "Cook $get_animal for $get_time"; }

print cook_animal(animal(cow),cook_time(5,23));

</comment><comment><USER45> Last time I used FORTRAN was all of 11 months ago. Thank god I've moved on to O-O and can actually declare functions.

</comment><comment><USER46> i'm smarter for reading this. need more.

<comment><USER47> Joel is a good writer. Especially his early stuff is golden. Go read some of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Yes, Go lets me do this. Though I don't like passing anonymous functions too much as the codes becomes hard to read rather soon.

</comment><comment><USER49> ahhh... Joel at his best. great piece of writing. and a gem about programming languages and abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER50> So are we supposed to be impressed by clojures now ? Or are we supposed to be impressed that the "great" Joel Spolsky (a ex manager in EXCEL team !!!!) writes about them.</comment>


Material Theming Is Google's Ambitious New Design Tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcodesign.com/90171179/exclusive-meet-material-theming-googles-ambitious-design-tool <comment><USER2> I hope and I hope Google come up with some version of google-mdl [1] . Its better to rely on their CSS+JS toolkit than anyone else.

[https://getmdl.io/started/index.html](https://getmdl.io/started/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see that we'll be getting a more flexible design system to work with - one that will hopefully reduce a bit of the homogeneity of the current generation of Material-based apps while still keeping some consistency.

Has anyone used the MDC Web toolkit? Does it play nicely with React and Vue?

</comment><comment><USER4> Better link: [https://design.google/library/making-more-with- material/](https://design.google/library/making-more-with-material/) (though the title's not as nice)</comment>


You're probably using the wrong dictionary - <AUTHOR> http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary

<comment><USER2> Something that happened in the early-ish parts of the 20th century is that dictionaries took a turn down the path this author is talking about. But that task was filled by style and usage guides. Fowler's modern English usage, Eric partridge: usage and abusage, Garner's Modern American Usage are all fantastic resources that dig deep into the topic of how and why words are used the way they are instead of stopping just at definitions.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7772557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7772557)</comment>


When under attack, plants can signal microbial friends for help - <AUTHOR> http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2009/oct/bais101708.html <comment><USER2> I had a room mate once (who studied biology) that explained to me that the smell we smell when the grass is cut is actually a warning signal that grass expels when cockroaches or other bugs eat grass. It was always humorous because he would smoke a lot of weed and then tell me "The grass really lives man! Plants talk, plants communicate, we need to respect their feelings."

I guess from this article that him being stoned didn't deter him from telling the truth.

<comment><USER3> The separation of plants & animals into: Walks, talks & feels vs photosynthesises, grows & smells, is just not a great one.

I assume plants could have evolved into bears & venture capitalists too if we replayed earth a couple of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In many species, if the tree loses its leaves due to a pathogen or insects then it can still get nutrients from any tree (of any species) nearby, as long as both root systems are in symbiosis with a common fungus. The mycorrhizal net actually transports nutrients between trees. It's pretty cool.</comment>


The Future of core.typed in Clojure - Ambrose BS - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clj-syd/wslsA5gKGlk

<comment><USER2> Fantastic question and answer format. Looking forward to studying this Socratic dialogue in some detail. Feeling like we should have done the same in the Melbourne talk</comment>


Ask HN: How do you develop a userbase for your side projects? - <AUTHOR> For a while now, whenever I build something on the side, my single biggest point of difficulty is getting users and increasing user count month to month. Certain projects I get enough users to initially validate the idea as good or bad, but after that point it's hard to continue to build and grow a decent userbase. I know there are many talented individuals here, so I guess my question to you is what tips and tricks do you use to build and develop a userbase? <comment><USER2> I've launched multiple side projects since the early 1970s. Nothing in the way of marketing has worked for me, but I think I have finally found an approach that works.

I know it's counter-intuitive, but, trying to find customers is actually a mistake! It's too much work for too little return.

The right approach is to devise a method to find someone who will find customers for you. This might be deeper than it first appears. Consider this example.

My current budding project (call it E) is a tool for students who are having academic problems. Before, I would have tried to convince students that E would help them. Instead, my current approach is to find people whose problem is not to improve their own academic work but to improve the work of others. My value proposition is directed at them not at students. It is their problem I am trying to solve. E solves their problem by giving them something they can offer to students needing help.

Now my effort is to approach academic advisors, tutors, remedial educators, learning disability psychologists, and the like via professional associations and activities. In a sense, these people have become my market NOT the students. They will work for years for free and share their success stories to fellow workers. This sustained compounding effort is the sort that can lead to exponential growth.

Devising a method to find such people can be difficult. Deep thought is needed.

Who really are your customers?

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit.

As an experiment I posted my side project in subreddits related to what the project's about. I went from ~15 registered users to 45 registered users in a couple of days. Google Analytics showed ~300 new users in 1 day and ~3000k page views within a couple of days.

Just by posting there and using Google Analytics for the most basic metrics, it boosted my site's ranking in google searches which helped. The numbers I got back are tiny, but it's fun to see new users still signing up and adding data to my project.

<comment><USER4> I also used reddit for my side projects with mixed results. My saleable project didn't do well but my OSS project did. My OSS project got 27 stars within 3 or 4 days (which is 3 times the amount of stars I had on my most popular repo).

<comment><USER3> Nice! Yeah definitely mixed results with Reddit, but it's great for free one- time advertising.

Another downside is you can't hit your audience more than once without being targeted a spammer, so I like to think of it as a free 'usertesting.com' outlet.

<comment><USER4> You can hit them more than once, depending on your target audience. I posted my library to /r/elixir and then to /r/programming. Admittedly it didn't do well on /r/programming but it got some views

<comment><USER3> Good to know. Maybe I'll post again in a couple of months to see if I can snag more users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are a lot of advice out there for this, only that it is always for full- time endeavors, ambitious startups with a team of co-founders and even hire marketers.

These advice can give insights but are rarely directly appliable to side- projects. What you want is a constant, predictable source of people genuinely interested in your project, rather than growth hacking your way to the exponential explosion.

The best way to do it for a side-project is to have access to and trust from an audience.

There are two ways to do it. Write a blog and be part of an online community where your target audience hang out. That is why the advice of having experience at the industry you are focusing is even more a sine qua non than with startups.

Both actions are actually very complementary. Regularly write interesting posts on your blog and create an audience with time. Regularly contribute at HN or subreddits or Twitter or whatever and gain trust.

In both strategies be sure to be useful and deliver value not necessarily related to your side-project. If people sense you are only doing that artificially as pure content marketing, you will lose their trust. And for one-man side-projects, this kind of trust it is even more important than to startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the really informative post. I've actually tried some blogging in the past but have since slowed down as I wasn't getting a ton of results, I'm definitely going to try and stick with that though. I also like the idea of being active in various communities. Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been building [https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com), and have ~400 people on an email list and a few hundred people a day use the site, primarily from having articles written about the project on TNW / Lifehacker.

Some observations:

* I work directly with a couple end users who really like the project, which gives much better feedback than posting on reddit, etc

* Build features that help more technical users (in my case, facets for programming languages)- people who come from HN / twitter give better feedback, write better tickets, and are more able to tell others if they like the app

* As far as promotion, I've had success with HN comments, guest posts on dev.to, and the startups reddit. All three have exposed the app to people with much larger audiences.

* The email lists Cooper Press manages are good to write for, because they pick up a lot of their content from niche subreddits.

* People who write articles about you rely heavily on material you've posted about yourself / your project (either on your own site, or in comments here).

* Some Simple UI features communicate what your project does better than verbal explanations (e.g. for a search engine, help text that shows example searches for different features)

* Any articles you write you can re-purpose in emails you send out, or vice-versa, so the time you spent doesn't get wasted if one approach doesn't work

* There is a compelling psychological benefit to posting a project on reddit (etc) in comments - every time I do, I think of some minor way I could improve the project. This is a bit like code reviews, where the pressure of showing someone your work makes you do a better job.

* Broadening the scope of what you can do gives you a lot more to talk about publicly. E.g. you might not be an expert in AI, but if you do a couple experiments on a dataset you have, you can participate in all those forum threads.

See also: [https://www.findlectures.com/articles/2016/12/19/FindLecture...](https://www.findlectures.com/articles/2016/12/19/FindLectures- com-A-Launch-Story/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really helpful feedback, thanks! I can definitely incorporate and adapt a lot of these points with what I do.

<comment><USER6> Glad it helped! If it works out I'd love to hear what the outcome is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my experience, it's really, really tough. To get our first customers we had to send thousands of emails, talk on the phone with dozens of prospective customers (for both customer development and actual selling). There's a reason why SDRs/Lead Gen marketers are full-time positions and it's ambitious to try and replicate a legitimate sales funnel without being able to dedicate time to it.

This isn't something I would have been able to do if I were still employed, which I assume is your situation since you refer to it as "something on the side." For instance, even getting on the phone with people can be tough, since the hours they're more likely to chat with you are the hours you're at work.

I know this isn't something you want to hear. The good news is that I'm sure it depends on the industry - we had zero connections and background in our industry when we started - and I'm sure our experience doesn't reflect _all_ companies. But I admittedly underestimated how much time/effort needed to go into selling a b2b product when I was a comfortably employed developer.

Edit: re-reading your post, I think you might be describing a consumer-facing product. In which case user acquisition is different, but I would say the challenges are the same (having built many consumer-facing side projects in the past).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree completely. I've come to learn its certainly a time consuming task regardless of the product, and the fact that it's a side product adds a degree of difficulty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just should actually do community building from the first second on. The easiest way is to share your idea and getting feedback on it. We developed a product for this. It is called STOMT. For example the game "Empires of the Undergrowth" (not on the market yet) intensively uses STOMT to collect feedback in form of short wishes (you can label them as a page owner). We also have integrations for a lot of platforms so people don't have to leave your product: [https://www.stomt.com/empires-of-the- undergrowth](https://www.stomt.com/empires-of-the-undergrowth)

Also works well for ourselves: [https://www.stomt.com/stomt](https://www.stomt.com/stomt)

You can think of STOMT as consumer-friendly GitHub Issues.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds really intriguing, I'll take a look!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its hard to provide actionable advice without knowing more about you. However, in general terms, you focus on developing and audience through a marketing plan that has a clear content strategy.

Your marketing plan might simply be:

Produce content in various formats for $market. Put call to action on content to urge $market to buy/subscribe/whatever. Then post the content in $community.

The content strategy might be something like:

I will focus on $subject. Will produce blog posts, vlogs, podcasts, whatever. The main subject revolves around it. I will do this three times a week for twelve weeks and measure which content got the most attention.

Its hard to say $advice will work for you because there are many variables. Feel free to ping me (email on profile) if you have more questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Valuable and actionable advice, I really appreciate it! I continue to see content marketing pop up, so I'm definitely going to try and explore that much more.

<comment><USER9> Its inbound through content. Works well for various markets but its not for everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have side project where we charge 60€/month to our customers (mostly small businesses but also individuals).

What we did to build a userbase is to pay a small fee (1,5€) to freelancers of our trust who would find possible clients (not random but selected people) and write a personalised message for them that we would send. Whenever someone becomes a client, they get extra money (7€).

If you run the numbers, it's just a matter of probability the fact that we make more money from paying them to find people (and knowing that a lot will fail) than from staying with our userbase without growing.

So far, it's been a good method.

<comment><USER11> That seems to be a low payout. If the ltv is say $600 your affiliate program pays out just over 1% of that. How do you get away with that?

<comment><USER10> There's a couple of things to consider here.

First, the affiliates do this to get some extra money, they aren't making a living of that.

Regarding the 1% of the ltv, you should also think about the conversion rate. Let's say we get 1 final customer of every 30 prospects the affiliate has selected. He is making 52.7€ which pretty much covers a full month of what the client pays.

Also, the ltv of our service is more like 300€ (I wish it was more, but for now that's good enough).

Another point is that finding a prospect isn't much of an effort. It can take them from 5 to 10 minutes max. At 5 min that would be a minimum payout of 18€/h. That's without counting on the +7.5€ if it becomes a client. If every 3 hours they can make a client, they make 20.5€/h. I don't think that's a bad payout for something you can do whenever you want without any obligation.

Lastly, there's the fact that some affiliates are better than others and have better conversion. The better you do, the more money you can make. Taking it to the extreme, let's say 1 of 3 became clients and it takes you 5 minutes to find one, you would be making 48€/h.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> try doing customer development to figure out if your on the right path. There is a short book Running Lean that has a great script template you can start with.

another great book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth co-authored by the founder of Duck Duck Go gives some really great advice on exploring channels through experiments in parallel to your development effort.

You could also try something like betalist to get some initial users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meet people having the pain point your side project solves in person and tell them about your solution. Have you ever tried attending meetups?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not (at least not with the intention of talking about a side project), excellent idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I suggest a title change from _" How do you develop a userbase for your side projects?"_ to something like _" How have you developed a userbase for your side projects?"_ or _" How did you develop the userbase for your side projects?"_.

</comment><comment><USER15> Much depends on what platform you are on. If you are an app - you need a marketing boost - can be done in multiple ways i.e. paid marketing, blog coverage, event launches, etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a thousand different answers to this.

A simple answer is to keep doing what you did to get your initial users, until that thing doesn't work anymore.

<comment><USER10> This is exactly his problem though. After having enough customers to validate the idea, using the same method doesn't help him to grow the user base. In other words, doing what he did isn't working anymore for him.</comment></comment>


A Beginner Mathematics Book for Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://mml-book.github.io <comment><USER2> Very nice thank you.</comment>


Stop Looking for a Co-founder - <AUTHOR> http://sachagreif.com/stop-looking-for-a-co-founder/

<comment><USER2> great post but i fear this is why designers don't get the credit they deserve. because in reality, designers usually tend to be a freelancer. the ones paying them, also tend to leave their relationships at that, just as a freelancer.

but i can name a few startups were able to completely take advantage of freelancers and not give a single credit back, such as mint.com (i maybe wrong but i did recall hearing the founder saying he hired a freelancer for their site for very low cash). once built, mint.com's design was spread all over the internet and posted for best designs showcase, etc... they might have gotten more initial press from the design community than their concept alone. but more likely the designers probably got nothing, while the initial developers gets a nice chunk of equity. it seems like it's a bit one sided. what happened to the days when beautiful art was worth more than what money can buy? now art is something you just buy in the streets for $10.

i'm a developer and i can't design to save my life. that's part of the reason why i have a great level of respect for great designers. i'd like to see them more as active founders in the startup community but it's really hard to find them.

so i don't know if this is just the nature of designers, just wanting to stay out of the business, and just satisfied with their project by project life. maybe they just really love to design, and quite simply satisfied with their life.

if that's the case then well great. but i feel that great designers are also worth a lot more than just a single paycheck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't writing about designers specifically. I believe what I wrote applies equally well to coders or business guys.

And I think you're extrapolating from the 10% (or maybe even 1%) successful cases like Mint.com to imply that equity is worth more than cash, but remember that in most cases equity in a startup is worth absolutely nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not a bad article, some good points there.

\- It's not easy to find a business partner, but it's awesome to have one, it is very important to have someone you trust and has stake it in to share opinions.

\- Start any ways, will be easier to find a partner once you have a more solid vision and have something to show.

\- Have a good network? Get freelancers to work for you for a reduced fee and in exchange get them good paying gigs with other companies.

\- Stop thinking the equity is gold, it's worthless till you have something that sells.

\- Learn to do more things.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Start any ways, will be easier to find a partner once you have a more solid vision and have something to show."

This didn't occur to me until I was almost finished writing, so it's last in my list. But thinking about it, this may be the most important point.

After all, why would you go looking for a co-founder right from the start? If you're a coder, you should at least build a prototype yourself. If you're a designer, you should design some mockups.

It'll be much easier to convince someone to join you if you can show more than just an idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes, thank you! Especially the line about "here's what I hear" line.

I'm also a bit worried when startups throw equity around like it's water... because technically, there's only so much equity...

</comment><comment><USER5> "Launching a one-man startup now has a very low barrier to entry. So we end up with a world where everybody wants to be a startup founder, and nobody wants to be a co-founder."

a very sad world, where the only person with skin in the game you have to bounce ideas with (or take the heat it takes to build a business with you) is... yourself.

</comment><comment><USER6> Should be retitled to "Stop looking for a tech/design co-founder".

I'm a developer who knows very little of the business world. If I were to launch a startup I could probably use someone with some business savvy, and they tend not to freelance.

<comment><USER4> I would love to know if many business guys are getting pitched by startups, for equity positions, and how they handle these offers.

(And if business guys are seeing a lot of offers like we do in the tech community, or if they're too busy dreaming up their own startup ideas to pay attention to someone else's.)</comment></comment>


Facebook Doomed to Be Yahoo, Says Snapchat CEO - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/snapchat-ceo-facebook-violently-implode-nicholas-carlson?trk=tod-home-art-list-large_0

<comment><USER2> And snapchat is doomed to be twitter, never making any money.</comment>


How Pfizer set the cost of its new drug at $9,850 a month - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pfizer-set-cost-drug-9-050100023.html <comment><USER2> IMHO this reflects the problem of applying free market principles, where cost depends on demand, to things like healthcare and education:

1) Demand is absolute: How much would you pay to live rather than die? For some of these drugs the charge could be 'your life savings' and people would pay.

2) Free market pricing is efficient because it distributes goods based on who wants it more (i.e., who will pay more). But for survival, everyone wants it equally; it's merely distributing goods to who _can_ pay more.

3) It's immoral to have people's lives depend on how much money they happen to have. That is, I don't think person A's life is more valuable than person B's because person A has more money.

The free market is a great tool, but like any tool it doesn't solve every problem.</comment>