How KitchenAid and Le Creuset Took over Kitchens - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/01/kitchenaid-le-creuset-peak-domesticity/605716/ <comment><USER2> We put a kitchen Aid blender on our wedding list almost 4 years ago. It's costly but rock solid, near if not industrial grade. I only wish I'd bought one years ago instead of buying and disposing of cheaper brands that don't last. (Penny-wise pound foolish I was.)

<comment><USER3> When the buy-it-for-life premium is nontrivial, I try to first buy something basic and use it until it falls apart, simply to confirm that _this is something I will use_

After all, sometimes you'll buy a guitar then realise although you like the idea of knowing how to play, you don't much like the idea of practising. Better to figure that out with a $300 guitar than a $3000 guitar.

And hell, often cheap devices last years anyway under home use, if you know how to look after them; my $7 electric whisk and $45 electric hammer drill are still working just fine after 10 years!

(Of course, you don't want to go so cheap it becomes dangerous/difficult/underpowered and artificially makes you not use it - I've mostly had the judgement or luck to avoid that)

<comment><USER4> > _When the buy-it-for-life premium is nontrivial, I try to first buy > something basic and use it until it falls apart, simply to confirm that this > is something I will use_

Believe it was popularized by Adam Savage, re: tool purchases.

Essentially, current price segmentation means the optimal approach is buying cheapest (e.g. Harbor Freight), seeing how much you _actually_ use it, then if you use it (or use it hard enough it breaks) buy something premium for your second purchase.

You'll save enough on all the things you don't _really_ use to more than make up for replacement costs.

<comment><USER5> Except tools may not themselves break but cheap tools can break other things. Cheap wrenches will strip hex bolts on bikes, for instance. Buy Wera hex-plus at a premium but do the job right right.

<comment><USER4> This feels like a relatively rare scenario masquerading as a common occurrence, which is part of the point.

Of people with wrenches, how many use them on engines or high-end bicycles?

And so it's relatively easy for tool companies to convince people "You know what? You may only have thought about working on an engine a few times, and have no idea where the valve cover is, but by god you're a _mechanic_. Not like those weekend warrior types. You deserve the good stuff. A full set of Snap-On!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like my KitchenAid but I think they took the simplicity to far, you can very easily turn it on accidentally when there is no bowl or when the "head" is in the up position (because of a lack of safety switches but also because the "change head position" switch is almost exactly the same as the start switch). This can easily break your fingers. I feel that that could improve. Also, the default white bread dough kneader is not so good, the more expensive one works better. Moreover the default "stirrer", without the rubber flap, is near useless. Still, it looks and feels premium.

"What I didn't expect, though, is how much having a few high-quality tools would improve my experience of cooking overall—so much so that any aesthetic payoff now feels incidental."

I certainly agree with that, I can just trow in some bananas, some oats, almond flour (optionally), let it mix, add some walnuts, pour into a cake shape and bake a nice breakfast cake. Also, pancakes, just start with the milk and you will have no lumps. Self made fresh whipped cream, also hard to beat. I like using it, perhaps it's a nerd thing, I read more since my fancy kindle, I bake more since my fancy kitchenaid.

<comment><USER7> Same here, im very disappointed those features are not there. Mixer running, move the mixer part up, no problem.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, and it would be very easy to make a mechanical (or electrical) switch that detects whether the bowl is present and switches that stop the machine when it is tilted backwards. Not doing it is borderline negligence imho.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's interesting. I guess KitchenAid have different products for different markets. In Russia they are considered an expensive but crappy product. Great number of colors, but underpowered, not well designed (engineering wise) and easily broken.

I was thinking of buying Le Creuset after my Woll Diamond left me unsatisfied after two years of use.

<comment><USER9> The old US KitchenAid mixers where of better quality than the newer ones. It seems to be one of the last products Whirlpool Corporation touched after their acquisition of KitchenAid in the 80's but by the mid 90's the mixers where just not as good as the originals.

It's sad because KitchenAid (everything they made) had a reputation for lasting a lifetime at a reasonable price tag. Maytag was the same way for larger appliances. Nowadays you have to step up to the semi-pro or even commercial items to get lifetime quality such as Viking or Wolf and the prices are anything but reasonable. I tend to buy used for appliances due to this fact as I would rather have the quality rebuild-able items than the low quality items mostly being sold today. I just bought and rebuilt a Viking stove it was easy, the components are fairly robust and it will last me a lifetime.

<comment><USER10> KitchenAid is also confusing on their line of mixers. Some are heavier-duty than others, but without doing the research it's very hard to tell as they all look similar on the outside.

<comment><USER9> I eventually upgraded to a used Hobart would not trade it for the world. I make a lot of bread so it was worth it for my household, it was only about $100 more than a top of the line KitchenAid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While I don't have Instagram or Twitter, another area you see this phenomenon is YouTube. Channels like Bon Appetit have quietly become huge.

Also, while the author is correct on the status symbol nature of these two brands, they only very quickly note that both KitchenAid and Le Creuset are historically "buy it for life" tools in a world of planned obsolescence.

That being said, I use a $40 Lodge enameled cast iron Dutch oven, and it works just as well. I'm curious about cheaper KitchenAid alternatives.

<comment><USER12> _That being said, I use a $40 Lodge enameled cast iron Dutch oven, and it works just as well._

What you're paying for with Le Creuset is the enamel. Lodge makes all of their enameled stuff in China and the it's pretty well documented that their enamel doesn't hold up as well.

Cast iron is cast iron is cast iron but with the KitchenAid mixers you're also paying for design. America's Test Kitchen has some decent stand mixer videos on youtube. Some of the other brands (like Bosch) have their loyalists but overall there are reasons beyond longevity to go for the expensive mixers.

<comment><USER11> That's interesting, regarding Lodge, but I could replace this 6 times and still spend less than the cost of one Le Creuset. (I appreciate irony of this point in contrast with my "buy it for life" point above.)

America's Test Kitchen is another service that's interesting in the context of the article. They aren't a sexy Instagram brand, but are a service that should thrive in this space. I'm wondering if they're getting the adjacent bump from all of this.

<comment><USER12> _America's Test Kitchen is another service that's interesting in the context of the article. They aren't a sexy Instagram brand, but are a service that should thrive in this space. I'm wondering if they're getting the adjacent bump from all of this._

ATK is a pretty well established brand, it's been around for twenty years more or less as an offshoot of the Cook's Illustrated magazine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Modern KitchenAide appliances (fridges, stoves, microwaves)are garbage. Cheap exteriors that dent easily, poor engineering of critical parts and lousy ability to repair broken parts in a cost-efficient manner.

Simply more evidence of decontented America.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really don't understand the appeal of dutch ovens for most home cooks. How is it better than a cheap roasting pan?

ie. [https://www.amazon.com/Granite-Ware-18-Inch-Covered- Roaster/...](https://www.amazon.com/Granite-Ware-18-Inch-Covered- Roaster/dp/B000050AVC/ref=sr_1_42?keywords=roasting+pan&qid=1583329832&sr=8-42)

I understand that you can bury a dutch oven in a pile of coals, but I figure hardly nobody is doing that.

<comment><USER15> Dutch ovens can go both in the oven and on the range, so they're a fair bit more versatile than a cheap roasting pan and allow you to get by with fewer pieces of cookware cluttering up your kitchen.

They also tend to be more durable. Our Granite Ware stuff inevitably has the enamel chipping off after a few years. By contrast, my mother in law's dutch oven is at least 50 years old and still going strong. You don't have to go full Le Creuset, either - there are plenty of quality cast iron dutch ovens that only have to last twice as long in order to be cheaper than the cheap roasting pan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article has me scratching my head honestly. "I decided I wanted to become a person who makes soup" \- isn't soup one of the easiest things to cook? I'm not really into cooking myself, but even I could throw together one given a recipe and some time. I'm not sure what kind of soup she was thinking about though, if you first need to buy articles worth hundreds of dollars to cook one...

<comment><USER17> That's the point of the article. You don't need it. The soup is an excuse to buy the status symbol.

<comment><USER18> I've noticed amongst my peers in their 30's that the action of trying new things is intrinsically linked with buying new things. Maybe it's a product of being raised in 1980s USA, but it isn't enough to just try to put new soup ingredients in the pot you have. You must buy something that 'sparks joy' or 'inspires' the action. Value isn't derived from the practice of something new unless accompanied by the dopamine bump of status symbol acquisition (and perhaps peer reaction to display of such symbol).

Want to start exercising? Gotta buy new $140 Lululemon tights to help inspire the action, because willpower isn't enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When a brand becomes a target is ceases to be a good brand.

Kitchen-aid has been slapping their name on all sorts of value engineered hand mixers, blenders and other kitchen appliances for a few years not. It's only a matter of time until they succumb to the urge to cheap out on their core product line and rake in the profits for a decade or so while perception catches up with reality.

<comment><USER9> It is the business model of Whirlpool corp. KitchenAid's destiny was fixed when Whirlpool bought them, they buy brands with stellar reputations and cheapen the products over time, miking them into the ground. They did this to Maytag as well. Sadly as of lately Electrolux seems to be following the model of Whirlpool and GE of acquiring and ruining brands.</comment></comment>


When to use dictionary compression (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://fastcompression.blogspot.com/2018/02/when-to-use-dictionary-compression.html <comment><USER2> Cloudflare and Akamai proposed optional dictionary-compression for HTTP [0] that could help smaller files achieve better compression ratios than gzip/deflate [1].

Given the fact that zipf distribution holds true for natural languages [2], dictionaries can be a simpler solution to text compression in low-power / compute environments?

[0] [https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-vkrasnov-h2-compression- dict...](https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-vkrasnov-h2-compression- dictionaries-03.html)

[1] [https://blog.cloudflare.com/improving-compression-with- prese...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/improving-compression-with-preset- deflate-dictionary/)

[2] [https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fCn8zs912OE](https://www.youtube- nocookie.com/embed/fCn8zs912OE)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm able to follow the article right up to the point where the author talks about replacing streaming with dictionary compression. How does this work, exactly? Don't you still need the same number of back and forth messages, since the protocol doesn't change?

<comment><USER4> Yes, the number of messages is the same. For small messages, per-message overhead may swamp the benefit of compression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16398752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16398752)</comment>


Intelligence and all-cause mortality in a sample of Scottish Mental Survey 1947 - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyx168/4085882/Intelligence-and-allcause-mortality-in-the-6Day <comment><USER2> Earlier findings from the same study data led with "Childhood intelligence was inversely associated with all major causes of death": [https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2708](https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2708)

There is definitely a conversation taking place in the research community regarding the degree to which the genetics of intelligence and the genetics of physical robustness overlap to provide some contribution to the intelligence- longevity relationship. The size of the longevity-wealth and intelligence- education-wealth relationships make it challenging of course, which is why much of the more interesting data is in lower species.

Bees, for example: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/old-and- wise/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/old-and-wise/)

"The ability to handle stress could be a component of system integrity; better overall stress resilience may contribute to both higher IQ scores and longer life."

There are still twin studies in our species, of course: [http://www.lse.ac.uk/website- archive/newsAndMedia/news/archi...](http://www.lse.ac.uk/website- archive/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2015/07/Link-between-intelligence-and- longevity-is-mostly-genetic.aspx)

"Our research shows that the link between intelligence and longer life is mostly genetic. So, to the extent that being smarter plays a role in doing a top job, the association between top jobs and longer lifespans is more a result of genes than having a big desk. However, it's important to emphasise that the association between intelligence and lifespan is small. So you can't, for example, deduce your child's likely lifespan from how he or she does in their exams this summer."

And GWAS studies over large populations: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/MP.2015.225](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/MP.2015.225)

"These findings indicate that a substantial level of pleiotropy exists between cognitive abilities and many human mental and physical health disorders and traits and that it can be used to predict phenotypic variance across samples."</comment>


Ask HN: Logistics of Hiring for a Startup - <AUTHOR>

What tips/suggestions would you offer when it comes to the logistics of hiring for a startup? Do you offer a salary or hire on a contract basis initially? What about equity - how much, how to calculate? Health plans? Benefits? What about setting up payroll? HR?<p>Basically, all the articles on hiring I've come across so far have talked about things to look for in a potential hire, but I'm looking for info on the overall logistics that go into bringing a new person on board. So all you experienced startup founders, please list your tips here: <comment><USER2> There was an article recently posted on HN about how your type of business plays into the logistics of hiring called "Is Your Startup A Cash or Equity Business?" with some good discussion.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1589808>

Concerning whether you should hire or contract, that depends on the kind of startup you have and what stage it's in. Being a contract developer among other things, I am naturally biased toward that route if it makes sense at akk for the project. But in my experience it doesn't make sense for most of the startups I've come across.

If you are pre-revenue and not funded, then contracting makes no sense. If you are pre-revenue and funded, it makes a little sense, but not as much as bringing on a dev as a cofounder for equity (not just because you can better afford it, but because you need it and it helps to validate your concept to find someone willing to come aboard).

So, when does contracting make sense? Typically if you have decent revenue and one of the following also applies:

      a) you need to prove an initial add-on concept for your business
         (e.g. a new feature or complementary software service/product)

      b) you are unsure of your future development needs beyond your immediate need.

      c) you are unsure of future revenues and/or company stability,
         in which case you need to stay as agile as possible.

      d) you need something to be developed and completed NOW.

Of course, this criteria is not exhaustive or absolute, just some anecdotal guidelines.</comment>


Could StarLink remove global internet censorship? (January 2020) - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/01/09/elon-musks-42000-starlink-satellites-could-just-save-the-world/#94291a24c2cd <comment><USER2> Step one: Make sure StarLink data isn't harvested by the US so anyone could trust it.

Step two: Success!

If you fly a satellite above a country to help people do something illegal like circumvent censorship, the country in question could jam or kill the satellites with no recourse from the owners. I see a way to stop censorship as A Good Thing but doing something illegal and force it down another countries throat from space and I would applaud if they shot them down. Because what is next? Jamming their national TV? Internet? Telephones? Might as well be a declaration of war.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got this question following a thread about censorship in the Middle East in the publication: https: //news.ycombinator.com/item? id = 24247561

I would be interested to know your opinion about the measures that governments could take that they censor their towns in case StarLink reaches rural areas of Middle Eastern countries (and countries in general that censor their local internet networks)</comment>


The New USA Freedom Act: A Step in the Right Direction, but More Must Be Done - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/new-usa-freedom-act-step-right-direction-more-must-be-done

<comment><USER2> There's a lot to digest in this, but it all strikes me as a bit dystopian that these bills and laws are framed using "positive" language and terms. Seems like a healthy dose of wishful thinking to title this bill with the word "freedom," when its entire purpose wouldn't exist were the values of free expression upheld in the first place.

<comment><USER3> Bills are always named like this. It's just something short to put on a sign.

<comment><USER4> Names have no meaning? I'm pretty sure that's dystopian.

<comment><USER5> It's a hard problem. When coding, I have to come up with sufficiently descriptive names for all methods, all internal variables, all classes, all modules to fit those classes in. Sometimes I feel the urge to cheat, to give less than fully descriptive names for things.

Inevitably, this comes back to bite me when I go back to revise the code and find I can't immediately understand what the code is doing, and the first thing I find myself doing is renaming poorly-named constructs.

Congress has very different constraints when naming bills, but the end result is the same, adding the burden of a hard-to-do-right, yet high-visibility responsibility to already-overworked staffers. I'm not surprised at all that the names for most bills are sappy and nondescript.

<comment><USER6> >Congress has very different constraints when naming bills, but the end result is the same...

You speak as if they're making an honest attempt to give the bills meaningful and accurate names. They want the former, not the latter. The PATRIOT Act, like the USA FREEDOM Act and many other bills, is purposefully misnomed in an attempt to hide what the bills does and to dissuade voting against it. "You wouldn't vote against patriots or freedom, would you?"

<comment><USER7> > The PATRIOT Act [...] is purposefully misnomed in an attempt to hide what > the bills does and to dissuade voting against it

When discussing the manipulative nature of the naming of the act in question, its perhaps useful to get the name right: it's not just the PATRIOT Act, its the USA PATRIOT Act, and USA PATRIOT isn't the full name, its an acronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism".

<comment><USER8> Wow, that is, appropriately, a tortured backronym.

<comment><USER9> It's a bad backronym, but it's not misleading.

<comment><USER10> I would argue that it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://supporters.eff.org/donate](https://supporters.eff.org/donate)

<comment><USER11> Effective!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To quote Team America: Freedom isn't free.

While it might be a step in the right direction, bills designed to justify and extend surveillance programs (especially of its own citizens) under the pretense of terrorism and the new favorite cyber-security, nothing ever really changes.

</comment><comment><USER13> You know the problem runs deep when they keep writing bills that basically say, "Remember that whole Constitution thing; yeah, they actually meant it."

</comment><comment><USER14> "More Must Be Done" -> If you need a tool to coordinate some kind of action, this may be of help: [https://www.iWouldDo.it](https://www.iWouldDo.it)</comment>


Sleep Function in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://itsopensource.com/sleep-function-in-javascript <comment><USER2> I think you can do setTimeout(resolve, ms) to have one fewer function.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done, thanks :)</comment></comment>


That Time a Guy Tried to Build a Utopia for Mice and It All Went to Hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2018/12/that-time-a-guy-tried-to-build-a-utopia-for-mice-and-it-all-went-to-hell/ <comment><USER2> Thank you for this, it's fascinating. Anecdotally, I worked for a company that was very well funded but completely adrift last year. Morale was at an all time low, despite generous benefits, free breakfast, and frequent company parties. There was political infighting and frequent departures, not unlike the decline of the mouse culture. I always argued that the morale boosting exercises only highlighted our total lack of purpose; interesting to see it in experiment form.</comment>


The more you learn, the faster you can learn - <AUTHOR> http://pranay.gp/how-to-learn-things-at-1000x-the-speed <comment><USER2> Some of the examples listed when the author speaks about why they are such a good learner felt a bit forced to me. I understand that authority is being established here, but a good number of the early examples seem to be what I would expect from a successful college student who has done an internship or two (e.g. what is recursion, building reusable UI components for a large company).

I also clicked through to some of the projects to find that they were team efforts, not independent projects that the author miraculously completed due to their own precociousness alone. This felt a bit misrepresented to me, although I understand the intent was probably just to show the breadth of involvement.

All in all I was happy to read the author's advice about learning but something about the intro rubbed me the wrong way. The author clearly has had quite a good number of experiences and I'm glad they're publishing these thoughts on those experiences. I just wonder if the post could do without the early hints of (forgive me) vaingloriousness? It felt quite academic and intriguing past the intro for me.

As the author may see this: please don't take this as anything other than a single individual's thoughts. I mean in no way to discourage you.

<comment><USER3> If you are in industry and you've some experience, highly likely you are already doing what the author claims to be his fast learning secrets. There are actually no deep secrets I find in his post, all of those things atleast I instictively do. Even my friends use same approach, so I thought it's so common that I don't have to write a blog post about it.

<comment><USER2> Maybe the technique in this post is common, but I personally believe that putting yourself and your thoughts out there is a good thing for engineers and critical thinkers in general. It allows us to get feedback and involve others on a wider scale, even if that means writing about things that have been discussed or thought about a number of times before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I found that companies always pretend to be all about learning, but in practice I haven't learned a damn thing after leaving uni, except the idiosyncrasies of their code. Maybe it gets better in senior positions (I spent 7 years in uni and have only 2 years of working experience), but I don't expect so.

I feel like since I am working, I am just getting dumber. I miss the time in uni where I was learning new things every week. I'm thinking of taking a year off just to learn new things.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately you probably are getting dumber, look to folks who had the same trajectory as you but are further ahead for confirmation.

If your work doesn't get more interesting you'll adapt to fight the boredom by becoming dumber. You have to fight that somehow if you value your mind.

<comment><USER6> Fighting boredom by becoming dumber, couldn't have said it better myself.

If you feel like this is happening, it is time for a change.

<comment><USER7> Anecdotally I felt that the 'become dumb to fight the boredom' mentality spills quite easily into life outside of work if you let it too. If I had a challenging day, I'd go home and study or build something - I'd keep the productive 'train' going. If I had a dull day, which was most days after the first 3 months getting to grips with the job, I'd go home and blank out watching a TV show or playing a video game. I couldn't break out of the 'dumb' mind-set after spending 8 hours in it.

Regretfully I've lost weeks and months to this mindless monotony over the last year. Thankfully Friday is my last day, and I start a post-graduate course in October which should be a splash of cold water for my brain. In short, I'm very much in support of your second point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This describes me pretty well. I'm a dedicated learner, and I think it's what I do best. I don't master topics. Even the information about the thing can be a distraction. It's about synthesizing info into your working knowledge. Everything is reference.

CSS is a great example. Do I know everything about it, even after 10 years? Nope. But I know it well enough that a quick reference is all I need for any problem.

Programming in general, too. Took me a minute to grok fundamental things (data types, functions, etc). I don't care what language I use, it's all one, plus syntax. I want to use other languages, for fun and synthesis.

<comment><USER9> "The determined Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language." \- Ed Post, _Real Programmers Don 't Use Pascal_, 1982.

There is a hell of a lot more difference between the various programming languages than their syntax. Natural languages as well - you can render idiomatic English in any language, and if you don't care very much about getting your intended meaning across (and your listeners are both patient and fond of puzzles), you may well choose to do so. It may get you food and lodgings for the night. But the computing equivalent of getting by in a pidgin isn't quite the same thing as programming in the language you're using.

<comment><USER10> Eh... once you know a handful of languages, it's fairly easy to adjust to a new one. If I have experience in C++, C#, Ruby and Javascript, do you really think Java is going to blow my mind? Or I won't be able to write decent Python? I'm sure I'd pick up a few tricks and my code would get idiomatic but I am going to be 90% there from day one.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure Erlang, Prolog and Forth would blow your mind.

<comment><USER12> Prolog blows my mind ever time I come back to it.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it's an amazing invention!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I couldn't agree more about finding the best resources. As with many other things in life, there are power law effects in how intelligent and knowledgeable experts are in their fields, and more importantly, how skilled they are at communicating what they know. The very best are orders of magnitude better than the average expert, and you will learn exponentially faster and better if you can find these people. This means being _very_ discriminating—if you don't find yourself highly enthusiastic to read/watch/listen to more of someone, you are much better off moving on quickly than trudging through without being truly inspired. It's better to search broadly at first, then zero in when you feel that 'click'.

Unfortunately, most schools and universities take the exact opposite approach. While you can eventually get very deeply and thoroughly educated about a specific field via academia, it's an _incredibly_ inefficient way to learn.

</comment><comment><USER15> >> , scaled a botnet of over 2,000 bots that made money from a popular trivia game,

Did this make anyone else flinch?

edit: I do want to comment on the Feynman Technique linked in the article. I've never actually written concepts down as explained, but it's very close to how I _actually_ learn (or at least, feel confident in my knowledge). If I can't explain something in plain language, there's a good chance I've gaps. The steps listed are pretty succinct - going to have to give it a try!

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't say it made me flinch, but that is not a throwaway line. It deserves some additional, I'm sure quite interesting, explanation. But I believe he is referring to HQ, and there have been other write-ups on HN about how to automate beating it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love telling this story, but that wasn't the point of the post

<comment><USER11> At the end you mention you may have found a good resource to improve your writing. Which resource is that? It's something I want to get better at as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Relying on fast estimations is one of the most powerful aspects of the way our brains work. But applying the skill of finding and applying fast estimations exclusively to every topic--like reading SparkNotes over an original piece--is a good way to eventually know very little.

Suppose any rate of decay in the things you retain. If your starting point is already small, losing any of it comes at a high cost. At least when pursuing mastery of a subject, you are repeatedly faced with new ways of understanding the basics, to the point that they are innate and automatic. You might forget small specifics which you can later find in your known references, but without mastery you might instead forget the basics--and relying on a reference for those basics means it's much less clear when they are aptly applied.

I would hazard a guess that that's why people have always tended to master only one or a couple skills, but people congregate and work in complement with others who have mastery over other skills. The community is the entity with knowledge over many domains--not the individual who learns tons of surface material. And simultaneously, everyone does learn a little bit about a lot of topics from time to time. But that balance is important--so I wouldn't personally weight so heavily the cursory synthesis portion of it as OP did.

\--

Also, a little advice to OP. Drop some of the grandiose introduction. 100% of the links I clicked in the first paragraph were more disappointing than their descriptions led me to anticipate.

</comment><comment><USER18> Basically, Pranay needed to boast his CV to the world and wrote a clickbaity article where half the paragraphs are mentions of his accomplishments and the rest is common sense which can be described as "learn enough to ask good questions and practice."

<comment><USER19> The first paragraph in which he boasts his achievements is what made me very interested in the article and led to focus reading carefully. I see the boasting is a by product of providing evidence, i don't see boasting alone in the post. It doesn't matter it's useful stuff.

<comment><USER20> If you clicked on any of the project links you'd see that most of them are exaggerated or misrepresented in the intro. A lot of team efforts for which he gave no credit to the others involved. I can understand the desire to establish authority from a writing perspective, but the author is embellishing his achievements here in a disingenuous way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting post! It's almost exactly what I've found that has worked well for me. Putting in the three or four hours at the beginning of the process of learning something to find the best resources is essential.

That being said, I do think the importance of mastering one or two things should not be overstated, and was kind of ignored in your post. Let me elaborate: for me my deepest skill has been 3D modeling and rendering: it's been about six years of pretty consistent practice, doing motion graphics, general modeling, animation, color theory, and really just trying to absorb all the knowledge I can about this specific passion. This process has been super useful for a couple reasons, and kind of worked to snap me out of the "generalist" learning mindset. For example, I've found the learning curve over time for 3D modeling is pretty generalizable to other skills I learn: because I've sunk so much time into it, and have had to push through plateaus, and grind over hills, and realize when I'm just coasting, whenever I am learning other things, I recognize the emotion swing and know roughly where in the learning process I am. Similarly, the fluency I have with my 3D modeling tools (pretty much all the hotkeys burned into muscle memory) gives me something to strive for when learning other tools and skills. I know what fluency feels like now, and I know when I'm lacking in it.

For me though, the most important thing about pursuing mastery of one or two things instead of full generalization, is that it teaches you patience. Genuine patience. Something I feel is becoming a lost art in our modern time. Seeing how far you've come after six years of working at something, and then looking at your inspirations and seeing how far you still have to go, is a feeling that can either break you, and make you give up, (if you are impatient), or can help you, as you have the choice to just keep grinding away and choosing to be patient. 3D modeling and animation is a ten year (minimum) goal for me, and it's served as a wonderful learning experience for me in many, unforseeable ways.

To tie it back to your post, I take this "ten years" mentality to almost everything I choose to learn nowadays: I try to stay away from the fancy new frameworks and toys, and try to learn fundamental things that I can spend ten years learning and still have space to grow.

<comment><USER22> That is how I felt about mastering Photoshop. "Muscle memory," exactly. And patience, yes, it took time and a lot of practice. I learned to accept intermediate stages as paths to mastery, knowing I'd get better if I just kept trying. Since then, that's how I approach all learning. I know that whatever else I try to master, I will get there, and what seems hard at first will become easier. I mean, that realization is like muscle memory too. It's ingrained in me now.

<comment><USER23> I still haven't found the patience to master Gimp the way you have mastered Photoshop :\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Of course, some of these steps (like finding the best learning resource), can only be done once you're already an expert who knows what all of the resources are! There are also a lot of situational things, for example although you may have a preference between videos, documentation and example code, the best to learn from is usually whatever medium the best teacher decided to use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Experts usually know some great resources, but are often themselves your best resource if you have access to one. I definitely forgot to mention them, the people I worked with at Facebook and ZEIT are on that list.

But when I wasn't working somewhere, I had to find my own resources and trust my own instincts. I didn't know who the best teachers were, so I had to decide for myself, what the best resource for me would be. Often, I got it wrong, but I got better and finding the diamonds in the rough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "I left an important part out of the process above - how do you actually find the best resource. I don't know.

That said, I've gotten "lucky" enough times that I think I know how to optimize for finding it."

Pro tip: No, you don't.

I'm game to explain it over coffee to the author, who seems to be in the Bay Area, but this writing reads a lot like someone who just started to scratch the surface on abstract learning and metacognition while thinking that it's a wildly new discovery.

It's hard to hear/read the reenforcing recitations of new-to- the-(speaker/author) concepts and not see it as a slow-motion replay of a common thought process, akin to sitting in Dolores park listening to musings on democracy and governance in the age of automation... thirty minutes after a batch of pot truffles has sold out...

As a generalist/multi-whatever, let me say this: expert engineers _hate_ the knows-enough-to-be-dangerous guy who thinks he's god's gift to learning that can just walk in and be conversant after reading one book. That guy is a pain in the ass know-it-all that spoils conversations, derails projects, and digs bottomless pits of technical debt.

How do I know? I was that guy when I was younger, and I'm sure I drove people nuts.

No doubt there are times when I'm still that guy, but I try to hold my tongue more now until I'm confident in what I know and openly disclose where I think I fall short.

If you can't take that mechanism for learning and flex it down to the bottom of the rabbit hole, or if you always fall back onto the crutch of relating a complex topic to a comfortable imperfect analogue, you're aiming to be the engineer that gets handed non-critical work or the manager that nobody wants in a meeting... Or maybe a successful founder of some kick-ass mega unicorn... sigh... whatever.

In the big companies (and Silicon Valley) I hear/see this type of thinking and self-congratulation _all_ the time among engineers with 1-4 years of professional experience. On occasion, those engineers have the horsepower to back it up, but it's rare. Some of that write-up resonates with how I've learned/worked over time, but I'd never write something so stridently confident.

Me 20 years ago?

<comment><USER26> I feel your tone is slightly too condescending, but I have to agree with the general statement.

I'm responsible for hiring in my small department, and the OPs blog post would be a red flag.

We appreciate if candidates show they can learn quickly, but it's not useful to us in isolation. You already need to have a good base set of skills (CS, physics) but more importantly the humility to accept that with 5 years of experience you probably don't really know the thing you claim to know.

Some bay area tech companies like to hire more riskily, so it might be a good strategy after all though.

<comment><USER25> Ha! I wouldn't be surprised if you found it _altogether_ too condescending...

I generally find myself being a little more brutal with people who sound/read like me 18-20 years ago, partly because I think that being hit over the head can actually do some good. It certainly helped me, and I'd have done better to listen more quickly rather than having the echoes of those much wiser than me take decades to sink in.

I strongly favor raw learning ability over knowledge when hiring for most positions. It's incredibly valuable to be able to transition from one space to another over the span of 3-12 months (depending on the domain). Some badges are harder to earn (e.g. mathematics, physics, hardware, distributed design), but I generally feel okay taking someone who is an expert in one space and pointing them at another space that relies on the same fundamentals if they seem like they can learn.

I do, however, prioritize two things above learning proficiency when hiring:

1\. Accurate self-assessment. If you can't understand where you are, you're going to be a constant headache. 2\. Not an asshole. An asshole can destroy a team, even if they're brilliant.

I want someone to be able to learn deeply quickly, though. Generally, if they have that ability, they'll have real depth in areas of prior learning. For candidates at the Senior Engineer levels and above, I'll spend at least an hour or two before the interview reading their publications or digging in on their areas of stated expertise so I can ask questions probing to their edge (or mine). Sadly, I hit the candidate edge first for roughly 80% of candidates, and it strongly correlates to no-hires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's a clear flywheel. Desire/Curiosity -> Risk-taking -> Delayed Gratification -> Self-Confidence -> "Give me more".

</comment><comment><USER28> This post could be expanded with what learning resources you found really awesome and why.

I use HN to find the best programming and math resources by using their search function, looking at the most upvoted learning resources or by scouring the comments and finding a consensus in a more qualitative manner.

On the top of my head: it led me to places such as Gilbert Strang for linear algebra or Eloquent JavaScript for a good introductory textbook and JavaScript The Good Parts for a more advanced textbook. 3Blue1Brown was a good channel for mathematics. And it is also thanks to HN that I discovered vimtutor. There are also a lot of references made her to Coursera course Learning how to Learn.

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely, I listed a few examples of great resources to make a point on the article. Another resource that seems like it might be great that I'm currently reading is Julian Shapiro's growth marketing guide - [https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro](https://www.julian.com/guide/growth/intro)

It is long form text, which is an automatic -1 for me, and I dismissed this for a while, but over time it's seemed to come out as one of those "great" resources in a different domain that I muse read. After starting, I noticed

1\. It reads more like vimtutor than an article; i.e. you pick your own adventure, which I can bite

2\. Many people I look up to as experts have directly recommended this to me

3\. It's relevant to me now - I'm working on a startup

I still dismissed the guide for a long time and wasn't convinced it was the best resource out there - but it's starting to seem like it's atleast a local maxima for me.

I hope that made sense into how I think about resources when learning. I don't yet have a coherent system in place to determine how valuable a resource is to me. I usually only know months or years later

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wrote about something similar in the past: [https://blog.oxplot.com/transient-ideas-and- learning/](https://blog.oxplot.com/transient-ideas-and-learning/)

</comment><comment><USER20> There comes a point in the learning process for any subject where you get so excited about the fact that you understand something new that you feel you need to tell everyone about it. This feels like one of those posts—the author has very limited experience, but he has formalized a coherent (albeit unoriginal) idea and because of that exciting feeling he now wants to shout it to the world. It's good to write as an exercise to help you grow or solidify your ideas, and a post like this, with all its self-congratulatory language, probably would have ended up better if it were written for OP himself rather than for the world. Instead, by publishing it, the author has the need to establish (and, it feels, compensate for) "why I'm qualified to talk about this". It's premature to have shared this underdeveloped idea, just as it's premature for the author to be boasting his achievements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bingo! I am an author with very limited experience and this was an exercise in growing and solidifying my own ideas. To that end, I chose to write about an underdeveloped idea and share it with the world. If you look me up, you'll find a string of unfinished and incomplete projects and ideas. I'm usually not scared about sharing underdeveloped ideas prematurely - I think it helps me grow (I wouldn't have gotten as much feedback on this post if I never shared it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I made a hobby out of exploring how learning works. The author is spot on. However, there are some tweaks worth considering:

1) The author proposes learning _everything_ under the sun, so that one has enough dependencies to learn new topics. This is like downloading most of the packages in aptitude to speed up builds.

However, I prefer to go about it in a different way. I focus on patience and normalizing myself to long and deep build chains. Learning a light topic in a new domain can take hours, if not days, to understand it deep enough to successfully use it to learn other concepts.

When there is something I need or want to know, but when I pull up Wikipedia and see a bunch of foreign vocabulary, I will create a dependency list of vocabulary, and learn everything I need to know to read that article and flawlessly understand it. If it is a new topic it can sometimes take a week of slow learning to quickly learn. It seems painfully slow, but it's learning a large chunk of a new domain in a week. This could be something a college class takes months to go over, so the rate is quite accelerated even if at the time it doesn't seem like it. Slow and steady really does win the race.

2) >I keep trying while following a breadth-first-search approach to domains and resources as described above.

and

>Stop. This is counter-intuitive, but unless you want to become a master at something (besides learning), you really just want to know everything at an intermediate level.

When recursively learning prerequisite concepts, usually understanding 100% of every prerequisite concept is necessary. There are no short cuts. In this scenario a depth first search is ideal, finding the root and starting there.

Likewise, a dependency chain of concepts is a chain of abstraction. When learning a prerequisite concept, no matter how abstract it is, it must be thought of as concrete. It must be understood as if it is concrete. This is the minimum bar to using a concept to build up other concepts. This is can be thought of as an intermediate level of understanding, but I suspect for most people this means mastery. Don't stop short.

3) What is learned will be forgotten within a couple of weeks, unless it a) has been pondered about a minimum of 6 seconds, usually by making up a story to describe it to yourself. The 6 second rule is a neurological limitation that is required to move the memory from short term to long term storage. And b) It is strongly beneficial for what is learned to leave the mind and come back into it on one way or another. This can happen by doing something with your hands, talking out loud about it to someone else, or note taking. This is important and without it details will be lost. I write in a condensed mind-map list like format for this reason. Likewise if I forget something or remember something wrong, I can go back with a ctrl+f and figure out what I did wrong.

4) Etymology is massively important when it comes to learning. The history of why the concept is called what it is called, as well as understanding why it was invented or how it was discovered. I try to visualize what the world was like before the thing I am learning existed and how things used to be done. This teaches me of it's power and when and why to use it. When etymology is done right, the mind will record the concept into spacial awareness which is the strongest and longest lasting kind of memory we have.

There is a lot I could say, but by understanding where people are coming from, you can apply what technique is ideal for that specific task. Learning is no different. One can master it, and from that the gains are innumerable.

<comment><USER31> Really Insightful comment.

You seem to know a lot about doing rapid learning well.

Any recommendations on what to read if I want to understand more about how learning works ?

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately, I do not have a recommendation.

I learned everything about learning by reviewing my notes. I take notes in a condense and highly abstract format that is quick to write, yet simultaneously gives something close to a one-to-one map of my mind. This way when I review I can learn better ways to study.

How I learned my technique:

I do Data Science / Data Analytics. When it comes to programming a Data Scientist can get by not knowing how to write a function. Many are horrid coders, and that's okay because they specialize in research and analytics, not writing code. However, if a DS' day to day is writing code, and it's the most painful part of the day, then would my life be better if I knew how to program flawlessly?

In response to this question I took a job as a Software Engineer for a while, doing hard core C++14 at the time. (The company gave me the hardest project they had to incentivize me to go back to doing DS for them.) I had learned C many years ago but when it came to C++ I struggled with making a class. I struggled at knowing what the difference between a copy and a move was. I struggled with multiple inheritance. I struggled with smart pointers. I even struggled with reference collapsing rules. It was painful!

In response, I developed the learning technique mentioned above, and decided to learn C++ at an accelerated rate. I learned over 250 concepts in less than a half a year, while being productive in a code base, and not just 250 concepts, but I learned the etymology of every concept. I learned how, why, and when to use them. I became a master at C++ and now it is my favorite language. C++ was a great use of this learning technique, because when I learned something it would come up again maybe weeks or months later. I wanted to know C++ so well I never had to google for anything ever again.

Long story short, C++ is a great candidate for meta-learning. That's how I learned what I know.

Also, the article mentions how subjects cross domains. This is a key aspect of my learning too. Inspired by Hofstadter, isomorphisms between domains has been a hobby of mine too, and I find both Data Science and Discrete Mathematics to be useful when it comes to the study of intelligence and the study of communication. I highly recommend doing the same. It's not only fun, but it can change your life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hi OP I am wondering if you ever did the corsera course "Learning how to learn" and what your thoughts were on it and if the you consciously or unconsciously employed the methods described to help you learn new topics.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, I haven't actually, but just looked it up and it looks like it talks more about test prep than the type of learning I talk about. Most of my coding skills come from self-learning things online the way I talked about it, at my own pace, without exams to reinforce that.

However, for test prep, through school and college I have read and tried a lot of guides on learning including simple index cards, the Leitner System ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system)), coming up with mnemonics, transcribing content from a source medium to some other medium, the Feynman technique, etc.

What I learnt about myself was that any technique involving writing didn't work for me. I would never go back to read something I wrote. I hated writing. I often walked into lectures without a notebook and just listened instead. Don't memorize. Listen. Understand. I have friends who were brilliant "test takers" \- which to me meant they could quickly memorize a lot just before an exam. That's something I'm bad at, so I took tests primarily based on what I'd understood over lectures, or follow up discussions I had with professors or classmates.

This also means I wouldn't practice math questions or work out physics problems before a test - I'd sorta just read over solved problems and make sure I understood them.

In retrospect, I actually think this isn't a great way to study for an exam and I always got very nervous just before a test because I feel grossly underprepared, but I saw passing them as a formality and usually just worked on other things I found fun (for instance, I built CSS Peek during finals week of sophomore year).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein.

</comment><comment><USER34> Instead of reading 'Learn You a Haskell', I would say go 'Haskell Programming From First Principle.

</comment><comment><USER35> I agree with the BFS strategy but I've never gotten good enough at anything to gain the respect of an SME.

<comment><AUTHOR> SME?

<comment><USER25> Subject-matter expert.

One critical way to become a better learner on a team (that is, a far less annoying learner) is to recognize when to ask a question of someone else and when to just Google/Portal/XPlore/etc it. Interactive mentors will be far more welcoming when they feel like you've earned the roadblock that you're up against.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! I've been called out for aggressively soliciting help

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Work's firewall is coming up saying this site is malware :S

<comment><USER37> You can read it using a "focused reader" service like Outline: [https://outline.com/cvHmpU](https://outline.com/cvHmpU)</comment></comment>


An open challenge to PandoDaily - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2012/03/02/anOpenChallengeToPandodail.html <comment><USER2> Pando Daily appears to be trying to recreate the TechCrunch of last year, rather than the TechCrunch of 3+ years ago. This is the same guy who wrote the mocking article on Ireland's startup scene. I guess he's filling the MG Siegler role.

You know what would be awesome? Some solid technology journalism. The last thing we need is another conflicted, industry mouthpiece. If this is the content they're pushing, I hope it fades into oblivion.

<comment><USER3> And, if I might be so bold:

Technology != Consumer-Oriented Devices

Edit (before the downvotes hammer this comment into oblivion): The subject here is "tech journalism". I don't consider puff pieces about smartphones, MP3 players, your cell carrier, or anything else related to consumer-grade products to be "tech journalism".

I've pretty much stopped listening to "tech podcasts" and subscribing to "tech magazines" because of this problem. They're not delivering anything even vaguely related to technology any more. They're telling me about the latest iPhone or iPad press release, or how some cell carrier is doing something that I really could care less about. Just like I don't care about the latest digital camera, or the latest MP3 player.

<comment><USER4> Which tech magazines do you read and recommend?

<comment><USER3> Maximum PC. Hands down the absolute best computer tech magazine on the market. Also highly recommend "This Week In Computer Hardware" (<http://twit.tv/show/this-week-in-computer-hardware>) for a tech-related podcast.

I've stopped listening to "Buzz Out Loud" because of its wall-to-wall smartphone coverage. And I'm about to give up on "This Week In Tech" (along with four or five other podcasts) for the same reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To put it another way:

If your address book data was stolen and made public because of poor practices by one of your apps, you'd be pretty upset right? PandoDaily mocking that type of situation is somewhat alarming.

However, if PandoDaily doesn't care about that type of scenario then go ahead and publish their address books. Otherwise, it's no laughing matter.

Edit: I agree with Dave's point. They wouldn't share it because no one wants this to happen. Therefore they shouldn't be mocking something that is fairly serious.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. That was the point of the challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author of the Pando article is 18 years old. He's not at the age where he has been burned by something he did when he was young and dumb. He's hard at work building a great foundation for what that moment arrives, though!

<comment><AUTHOR> A net naive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My open challenge to PandoDaily is to stop being utter shit. That's it. No clever attempts to trap them into defending their beliefs, just improve to the point where they in some way, shape or form resemble a credible journalism outfit.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the point of the PandoDaily post was that you're already trusting apps with access to your data. You've granted permission for the app to access it any time. When I grant permissions for an app to access by data, this doesn't mean I am allowing my data to be published for the world to see. That's what privacy policies are for.

<comment><USER9> ...and Dave response's point is that there's no way to guarantee the privacy policy is obeyed, unless it is enforced one way or another. User expectations with regards to the private data were supposed to be guarded by App Store approval process and Apple's iOS access restrictions, however this and now photos somehow slipped through.

Pando's mocking of the situation with clipboard example is off the mark. User's expectations from the clipboard is to actually share data (between the applications). Yes, there's a chance that app will publish the contents of your clipboard, but I don't think many users will _store_ sensitive data in the clipboard anyway. In other words - vulnerability of the clipboard is an acceptable trade-off, however accessibility of contacts, photos, other private data is really not.

<comment><USER8> Privacy policies can rarely if ever be enforced or guaranteed. This isn't something new. I can't think of many cases where a third party guarantees adherence to privacy policies. Ultimately if you give someone access to your data, you have to trust that they treat that data appropriately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The whole point of the PD article was that you trust developers to not do these things because market forces keep them in check. If an app was abusing your privacy, it would be revoked by the marketplace (Apple, Google, BN, or Amazon) and its developer's reputation would be tarnished.

Of course, maintaining a database of sensitive information is rife with risk, and it's completely fair for journalists to point that out. However, Path, Hipster, Instagram, etc. have no intention of leaking your data. An article reminding us to give developers the benefit-of-the-doubt in these cases is not even remotely the same thing as an article defending leaking personal data.

It's therefore disingenuous of the author to suggest that reminding people to be civil in the ways they react to these situations implies that we should all be comfortable publicly posting our personal rolodexes.

Someone else's contact information is not your IP to divulge; however, that doesn't mean we need to start a witch-hunt about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are hundreds of thousands of apps. Not all of them have reps that can be tarnished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is another great article about the credibility issues the Silicon Valley industry has because of its conflict of interest: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi- hiltzik-20120222,0,704...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi- hiltzik-20120222,0,704588.column).

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a false comparison.

Uploading your address book to Path is _not_ the same as an app locally reading the contents of your clipboard and asking if you want to use that data. It's not even in the same league.

And, loathe though I am to defend PandoDaily, the OP misses the point of their article. Uploading your address book to an app is different than posting it publicly because people trust Path their their data. If they didn't then the really shouldn't be using it in the first place.

<comment><USER13> > Uploading your address book to an app is different than posting it publicly > because people trust Path their their data.

Are you sure about this?

Has every Path user really reviewed Path's data security policies and deemed them satisfactory? Do Path users even have access to that information? And if they did, would most of them be in any position to evaluate it knowledgeably?

Or isn't it more likely that they trust Path because _they don't know the full scope of what Path has access to?_ Blind trust is easier to extend to someone the less information you're trusting them with, after all.

<comment><USER14> I'd argue that ven if they read the security policy they wouldn't understand it anyway. When you're surrounded by hackers it's easy to think everyone has some basic understanding of computers but in reality most people are lucky if they know how print a damn Word document.

This really is a false comparison. Accessing an address book for the app's use only and accessing the address book for public publishing are so far apart it's ridiculous. Security policies don't mean anything. If data is stored digitally there will always be a way to compromise its security no matter how much encryption, SSL, etc. you use. Security, especially on the web is a total misnomer. All you can really do is make it inconvenient to access.

Trusting a company isn't about their data privacy and security policies. It's about their brand to a large degree. Their track record and other peoples' experiences with the app. I'm in the camp that understands these policies and what they mean but thats not the reason I trust the company behind an app. I trust Google with my docs because they have a good track record. Facebook I trust as a necessary evil. Scratch that, I don't trust Facebook but I use it anyway because I'm banking on the odds. I think that's what it boils down to for most average folks. If the odds are that they'll have no trouble then that's a risk they're willing to take. If there's a breach of security and a bunch of people have their data exposed (but I'm not affected) well that makes me think twice not because of the breach itself but because of all the pile-on press coverage.

I'm one who firmly believes that people don't make their own minds up about this stuff. The average person's view of this whole app uploading address books thing is based purely in whichever side of the manufactured debate is the loudest and seemingly most expert-y. After watching how people use the web, their computers, and their smartphones for some time now I've become really cynical when it comes to this stuff. People don't seem to care until someone writes a blog post that tells them they should care.

<comment><USER13> _> People don't seem to care until someone writes a blog post that tells them they should care._

But that's the point, isn't it? They shouldn't have to care! People shouldn't have to be security experts to use a phone. The phone should protect them _by default_ and make them have to jump through hoops to waive that protection, rather than the other way around.

<comment><USER14> The phome ismt what's insecure though in this case. We're talking about the security of the servers that these apps are sending data to. For some reason people think about phones differently than any PC running whichever OS. If the app store didn't exist and we got smartphone apps the way we all used to (and to large degree still do) download PC programs I doubt anyone would be upset with Apple. All the blame would be solely on the app developers. Apple polices the app store and locks down iOS a lot as it is. If Path were a native Mac or Windows program and it was accessing data from other programs we'd all be screaming that it's some kind of spyware. We'd probably sayng that Path itself should be asking permission to access data, not the OS. But because we have the app store and have come to have this strange relationship with Apple where we bitch about how locked down the devices are but at the same time want them to protect us from apps like Path we're placing some responsibility on Apple. I don't think it's right. We need to decide if we like our locked down devices or if we want Apple to stop playing babysitter for us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is apples to oranges. Most users, use applications because they find about it from trusted sources. They are more interested in just using the application and moving on. Users have shown time and again that as long as the source is trusted (friends, media, overhyping blogs) then they leave it up to the company to make sure their data is _private_. Calling to a challenge of posting everything to public is misstating what users actually provide: a permission to take their data and keep it private versus here is my data for the rest of the world to see. There is a social contract between the user and the company that is bound by the trust that "my info will not be leaked" and looking at the history of the web I think the companies backed by competent teams take this contract very seriously.

<comment><USER16> So it's okay that Twitter, Facebook, Path, etc, all have my contact list and possibly more? The point isn't that users trust they are keeping the data safe, its that they took it without asking up front. Those apps may be out to make its users lives easier, but I would like to know when they are taking my personal data and _keeping it for 18 months in an archive_

Either way, TC was/is lame. PandoDaily is too.

<comment><USER15> It is not okay in the legal sense. But it has been given a green light far too many times by tacit approval of the users who could care less so long as the info is not leaked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "When you said X, you probably meant Y. But I bet you don't believe Y, thus you were lying about X."

How many pointless arguments take this form? He should articulate why he considers the situations comparable, so the Pando people have something to disagree with.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a little abstract for me, so I'm not sure I understand the objection.

Their point is that we are being silly for caring where our personal data goes.

If we're being silly, here's an easy way to prove it. Show us how careless you are with your own personal data.

If there's a limit, something you won't do to show how casual you are about it, then we found something that we agree on.

My belief is they haven't thought it through, and are just being cute for the sake of being cute, about something that is very serious.

Actually trying to help them find a good place. Because where they are now, is not good.

Of course imho and ymmv.

<comment><USER18> The article referenced an app accessing the clipboard (x) and your challenge involved uploading all of one's contact information and pictures (y).

<comment><AUTHOR> You missed the bigger story that they were making light of.

<comment><USER18> I didn't miss it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice post. If an application on our computers would upload all our contact details, our bookmarks etc to their servers to make it "easy" for us, would we agree to that. Guess we are just using these apps without worrying about the security. Good that people like Dave are bringing it out to the open.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pando Daily's cynicism is only matched by society's indifference to data privacy.

<comment><USER21> s/cynicism/trolling/

FTFY

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> PandoDaily appears opaque about their bias to me, so I don't read it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Edit: needs a question mark after "editing".

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't download an app unless you trust the folks who made it. It's not on the company, it's on you. You are responsible for yourself and the security of your information. It's not Instapaper's job to watch your shit.

Also, call a spade a spade. If you want to issue them a challenge, ask them to download the Facebook app or the Path app or any of the other infringing apps. But they already have. They have already done the thing they're being accused of being uncomfortable with.

How sharing information from your iPhone with a company and publishing it online for the world to see are equivalent, I can't fathom.

</comment><comment><USER25> So, since every single application in your computer can access all of the same data and do whatever they please, has had that ability since forever and we see that as an advantage (see problems with adding sandboxing on the Mac), why are we so concerned about it on our phones and completely ignore the issues otherwise?

The only reason I could come up with is that on the phone we have apps that actually use that data, social networks of various fashions, while on our computers we mostly use apps to do stuff and social networks stay in the browser.

Should we be asking OS vendors to add those checks to our computers too?

<comment><AUTHOR> People are much less careful with what they download and install on their iPads and iPhones because of Apple's assurance that the apps are safe.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. There's an implicit promise to Apple's sandbox and theirs and Jobs' statements about how they're protecting users from Internet scaries (including porn and other "offensive" content) has given users an incorrect impression that data on their phones is safer than data on their computer. Add to that the fact that most adults remember an era when cellphones had no connectivity, or only USB or serial connections, and its not hard to see how people missed this.

Now the platform owners (Apple, Tootle, Microsoft, etc) must respond to keep the promise they've made, whether stated or implied, or eventually users will rebel. But until the response or rebellion happens, how much damage will be done?

The platforms will adapt, and users will eventually upgrade or move to competitors, but it will take months or years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nice try. No Pagerank for you!

<comment><USER28> ....do...you even know who Dave Winer is?

<comment><USER27> why does that matter? I'm judging the content of the article, and it's just accusing another blog of something, just drama.. no valuable content here. just pointless, trivial drama looking for an ego boost.

<comment><USER28> Hint: scripting.com has a better pagerank than PandoDaily.

He's the guy who practically _invented_ blogging.

<comment><USER27> again, that doesn't matter. Even after knowing who he is now, trivial content is still trivial content. And he might've invented something, but blogging most definitely isn't it. Blogging was going to be come about inevitably once someone invented the internet - that was the hard part. Blogging is just an extension of people expressing themselves.

<comment><USER29> Please, please. Why go there? You've got this thread where you could be having a discussion on an interesting and important topic, but you're wanting to fork it into a personal attack over something that's irrelevant to the topic and that has been discussed ad ad nauseum on tens of thousands of other such threads.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2412564 <comment><USER2> What Snowden did, or more specifically what the faceless, unaccountable and un-nameable NSA directors did was what George Orwell was trying to capture in his famous novel.

The notion of thoughtcrime and crimethink being the punishable event in the minds of the people. Where people are afraid to research something because of the perception that the secret unaccountable police will come take you away if you give the idea too much thought. And there is nothing you or anyone can do about it because the entity doing the enforcing is completely hidden. Even asking for the names of the directors and writing about what they've done is crimethink. Thinking about or asking for the document describing which thoughts are crimethink is also crimethink.

But perhaps I'm looking at this the wrong way, maybe a utopian civilization would consider thoughts of evil, thoughts of crime and intentions to harm others as a justifiably punishable event. If your neighbor is thinking about how to make a bomb, or how to kill someone, or how to commit suicide, or how to defraud and deceive others, wouldn't it be better if the secret police put a stop to it there?

We could live in a post-crime society. Where everyone is un-corruptable and all humans treat each other as lovingly as we treat our own bodies. The problem with this is that the secret police only enforce the rules of the rulers, which has a thicker script for the lower classes than the upper classes.

<comment><USER3> Strangely the creeping Orwellian scenario may be the most optimistic view to take. If the monitoring is unnecessary it can be rolled back one day. The threat can be removed.

But what if the monitoring really is vitally important in preventing violent crime? The government will loose the spying capability soon enough as technology and understanding evolves. What will happen then?

<comment><USER4> > But what if the monitoring really is vitally important in preventing violent > crime? The government will loose the spying capability soon enough as > technology and understanding evolves. What will happen then?

We can look at data in regions where monitoring is most egregious and see whether improvements correlate with monitoring, or if they could be explained by other factors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Using panel data, our result suggest that cross-nationally, users were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the U. S. government."_

Since their data is based on Google Trends, the only conclusion they can validly draw from their research is that users were less likely to search for such terms _on Google_. People with sensitive search topics may have moved to a search engine like DuckDuckGo, which doesn't log users' searches.

</comment><comment><USER6> I doubt it changed the search behavior of "Joe User" at all.

<comment><USER7> It propably at least changed the search behavior of the Bad Guys.

<comment><USER8> Stupid bad guys. Smart ones already assumed the NSA was poring through everything.

<comment><USER9> Take a look at the average violent criminal. The stupid ones are just as dangerous as the smart ones, and there's a lot more of them.

<comment><USER10> Terrorists aren't much like criminals. For a start, they're ideologically motivated. And that's the argument for why we as a society, need to treat terrorists differently than criminals in the first place.

There's only a very, very few terrorists, even when the US government has done its level best to create as many as possible. I doubt we can take a quantitative argument like yours and get decent results.

<comment><USER9> The term "bad guys" is much broader than just terrorist. Feel free to substitute "drug smugglers", "human traffickers", "members of organized crime groups", "militant extremists", or, yes, even "terrorists". Nor did I make any argument as to how to handle any of them. The point is that you don't have to be smart to cause harm. The smart ones were presumably harder to track beforehand; the not-so-smart ones are likely a lot smarter now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about "how the Snowden relevations changed the behaviour with online porn"?

Because I'm considering leaving all that behind. Some creepy organisation going all peeping tom on me? No thanks.

Sure this has been researched as well?

<comment><USER12> actually the study looks at other searches which would get them in trouble with friends, neighbours and colleagues. So yes it has been researched, partly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The quality of writing in this paper is quite terrible. I'm not sure what kind of review this went though, but I'm kind of shocked it got approved with data points named "After Prism Revelations". Revelations is an emotional word for that data descriptor.

<comment><USER14> Your comment is extremely bizarre. The paper seems exceptionally clear and well-written! It's rather short. It gives the necessary background and states its assumptions, it is very easy reading.

Can you quote a paragraph you didn't like? Is your main issue that the data descriptor is defined elsewhere (as opposed to a date range)? I don't think the descriptor itself is emotional at all.

By the way, I thought based on the abstract that the effect would be rather large. For anyone who downloads the PDF, go to the graphs - the effect is actually a very small difference even on search terms rated to get people in trouble with their governmetn, as well as on personal-privacy related search terms.

The effect is clearly there but rather small compared to what I was expecting.

Granted I only spent a few minutes with the PDF and could be misinterpreting.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thoughts on invite-only startups? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Invite-only is good for testing your MVP early and gaining a core group of initial users through exclusivity.

However, eventually you should open up to the masses to continue to scale. (See facebook's model)</comment>