Guy uploads, downloads, then re-uploads the same video to YouTube 1,000 times - <AUTHOR> http://slate.me/bNg1lh

<comment><USER2> Was the aspect of using YouTube's servers so critical to the artistic quality of this project that he couldn't just substitute a shell script that encodes the video 1000 times over? Would've taken a heck of a lot less time than the year he spent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, in addition to the artistic aspect of it, he wanted to educate people about what actually happens to video when it is sent to youtube. This is much more relatable than saying, "I wrote this shell script..." Also, having the log of all 1000 versions on youtube is interesting as well.

The other thing about art is that time is usually not a large motivating factor...

<comment><USER3> The thing is, I'm not convinced that it's youtube's fault; apparently he converted it to mp4 on his own computer after the download from youtube, before re-uploading it. I wonder if he'd have had the same effect if he'd uploaded the same format he ripped from youtube.

<comment><USER4> Nobody is blaming youtube, video compression or anything of the such. This is to expected behaviour. And no normal person should be able to expect, or want to upload and download a video 1000 times, or even more than 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's the difference between an artist and a Perl programmer? 364 days and 23 hours.

<comment><USER6> And the Perl programmer has disposable income and a girlfriend.

<comment><USER7> Wait, in what part of the world is a programmer more likely than an artist to have a girlfriend?

<comment><USER6> Ones where girls like the guy to buy them food?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> #1000 looks like an alien from another dimension trying to communicate with us.

It's the modern version of photocopying something tons of times..

Certainly a good education about lossy compression for the non-technical public.

</comment><comment><USER9> The HN community could have saved a lot of time writing a shell script to post a snide comment about writing a shell script from every account instead of forcing everyone in the thread to do it individually.

<comment><USER10> I think that, simply, this sort of art is quite different from what large parts of the HN crowd would consider artistic/beautiful.

(personally: doesn't do anything for me as art)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "Angry Video Game Nerd" guy did a similar thing with two VHS tapes, copying a video back and forth over and over:

<http://www.cinemassacre.com/2010/05/26/vhs-generation-loss/>

<comment><USER12> so: prior art?!

<comment><USER13> It's his take on Alvin Lucier's famous "I Am Sitting in a Room":

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfssj80oNuM>

The original recording is linked from the Mashable article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I did something like this - I took an image and rotated it a couple hundred times in Windows Explorer. It gradually degraded into a blurry blob.

<comment><USER15> Which is pathetic, since it's possible to do a lossless (I mean not incrementally lossy) rotation of JPG's.

<comment><USER16> MS Windows (XP IIRC) used to warn you if you used the built in image rotation function for JPEGs that it was lossy. I've a feeling it was fixed in SP2 but I've not used MS Win for years so am not really sure.

<comment><USER17> Win Vista & 7 don't have this problem (just checked).

<comment><USER14> I did this in 1997 or 1998.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sometimes this effect of multiple lossy compressions is very apparent on certain... ahem... adult sites, which steal content from other adult sites. When the content has been decompressed and recompressed enough times certain artifacts start to appear, as well as other issues like aspect ratio problems.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does this mean YouTube's compression settings don't target a specific bit-rate but instead aim to make it "no larger than X and at least y% smaller" than what was uploaded?

I'm surprised it's not just a pass-through at a certain point (if nothing else, that'd save CPU cycles).

<comment><USER20> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1402382>

Apparently it was himself who re-encoded the video, not youtube. Dont know where jemfinch got that info though.

<comment><USER21> And youtube serves content in different resolutions (SD vs HD) and formats (flash vs ipod). It's possible his choice of either of these had a negative effect on the quality. It's also possible it all happened during his on conversion on his local machine.

I wonder what results he would have gotten if he pulled the h264 copy down that is served to apple devices and uploaded it without modifying it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The process reminds me of this post: [http://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/355-How- I-M...](http://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/355-How-I-Met-Your- Mother-Through-Photoshop.html)

<comment><USER23> Great post, I wonder if the trick that photoshop is pulling is really beneficial or worse in the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What's really cool about this is that his stated purpose ("to remove all human characteristics from both my voice and my image") is fulfilled by his voice and the individual frames - but the way the shapes _move_ is still very human. A lot more human than CGI animation is still doing, actually.

That's neat.

</comment><comment><USER25> Now he needs to splice them all into a single video showing the gradual degradation over time.

</comment><comment><USER26> My speakers were on full blast - the 1,000th uploaded one scared the crap out of me! :O

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm surprised it continued to change after detail was lost. Seems like there would be some measurable property of a codec/decode process that could be quantified - the entropy? It would be a desirable property to be 'idem- potent', e.g. after one cycle the result settles.

<comment><USER28> > _codec/decode_

I think that you meant: 'code/decode.' 'codec' is a abbreviation for 'code/decode.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can understand the video getting messed up, but what happened to the audio? From what I understand re-encoding an mp3 doesn't do much - all the waveforms that were going to be thrown out, were already the first time. On the second pass nothing much changes.

Or did he rip the video using speakers and mic, rather than downloading the digital data from youtube?

I have a feeling the errors came during the ripping process, not the encoding process.

<comment><USER30> _re-encoding an mp3 doesn't do much_

Sure it does, typically. It's no different from video in this way: ideally, all of the image features that would get thrown out were thrown out the first time, but the codec isn't that smart.

Most implementations of lossy compression algorithms don't have stability under re-encoding as a goal. (A few do – some image editors are smart about passing through unchanged JPEG blocks, for example, and I think mp3wrap will join MP3s cleanly.)

I'm too lazy to look into exactly how he did this, but it's not impossible that the audio artifacts came from pure MP3^ _n_ re-encoding. It's a case that most compressors ignore.

<comment><USER31> Why hypothesize? Create a directory. Copy your favorite MP3 into it as both "source.mp3" and "orig.mp3". (orig.mp3 is just for convenient comparison later.) Then:

        for i in {1..100}; do lame source.mp3 dest.mp3; mv -f dest.mp3 source.mp3; done

Then listen to the resulting "source.mp3" at the end. Send whatever params to lame you want in that command line, though the defaults strike me as pretty good for this test.

BTW, when people point out that scripting this is easy, they're not kidding. We're talking shell one-liner here, forget even hitting perl.

I'm on about iteration 7 as I write this and it's definitely breaking down.

<comment><USER32> [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/86yiq/hear_what_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/86yiq/hear_what_happens_when_you_reencode_an_mp3_600/)

A reddit post on that exact experiment. Sadly, the file is down.

As a side note, I had a post here that I deleted about this, worded something like "Yes, they used _that_ song". I went back to read the topic, and found I'd made nearly the exact same comment on the story over a year ago. I guess I'm a tad predictable.

Edit: Aha! A megaupload link was posted that still works. <http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ALZY0LCD>

Also related, the same experiment but for .jpg: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/86v2z/see_what_h...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/86v2z/see_what_happen_when_saving_600_times_a_jpg_image/)

<comment><USER29> That file only increased my questions on what happened to the audio on this vid. The song is quite recognizable. So why did the youtube one turn into garble?

And the jpg one is just incorrect. He kept increasing the compression ratio, which proves nothing at all. For a more accurate view see [http://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/355-How- I-M...](http://hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/355-How-I-Met-Your- Mother-Through-Photoshop.html) which shows that after a certain point the jpeg stops changing. (Which is what I expected the mp3 to do, but I guess it doesn't.)

<comment><USER32> The mp3 is probably using a different audio codec than the youtube video/mp4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Here's the inspiration: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Sitting_in_a_Room>

</comment><comment><USER34> I wasn't familiar with the audio piece that inspired this so I downloaded the mp3 from <http://www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html> . It turned out to be a nice background soundtrack for programming today.

Music with words usually distracts me when I'm working, but this didn't.

</comment><comment><USER35> It's really interesting to note the differences in our perceptions of the final audio versus the final video.

The video, while severely degraded, is obviously still a human figure moving around.

The audio, on the other hand, is mangled completely beyond recognition.

</comment><comment><USER36> Next time the topic of bandwidth caps comes up remember this guy. I don't want to knock his project but I think it illustrates a point that unlimited bandwidth and access to services tends to make people less concerned about using bandwidth efficiently.

<comment><USER37> He used hundreds of hours of his time. What makes you think he would've refrained from paying a few extra dollars for the bandwidth?

<comment><USER36> Nothing. I'm sure he probably would have if forced to. I know from my own (bad) habits I often waste bandwidth just because I can. Common example of this is having a file downloaded to my laptop sitting in my backpack but instead of taking it out, waking it up, mounting the share and copying it I'll just re-download it from the Internet instead because I'm lazy and there's really no downside for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm too lazy to look this up, but did the video get smaller or larger with the iteration number? This is more interesting to me than the look

<comment><USER39> Time: yes File size: yes

Not sure why the time dropped.

<comment><USER40> I'm not a video expert, but I did write some software for muxing and demuxing for a company I worked for some time ago. The major problem I had was that video and audio are stored at different "frame rates" (almost in a literal sense). A frame of encoded audio is generally shorter (in seconds of playback) than a single video frame is displayed on screen for. So, if you were cutting and splicing video, you'd end having to decode the audio, break apart the first and last frame's worth of it, re-encode it, and then offset the timing of the audio from the video. This is very obnoxious to get perfect.

I've got no idea if that's what impacted this guy's video though, but I'm sure it's far from the only weird thing involved in video compression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wow. It's like a lesson in wavelet transforms for the layman. But without ever using the word 'wavelet.' Cool.

</comment><comment><USER42> He probably could have saved a lot of time with a shell script :)

</comment><comment><USER43> I bet Christopher (prawn protagonist of _District 9_ ) might be able to grok the bizarre utterances in the 1000th video... but I can't.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm sure Youtube loved getting spammed with a 1000 very similar videos

<comment> matthew-wegner Probably not as much as they loved an interesting story about YouTube on prominent websites.

<comment><USER44> come on now, it's youtube, they're the second most used search engine in the world. They don't really need good press anymore</comment></comment></comment>


Using Binary Space Partitioning in Doom - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/12/how-much-of-a-genius-level-move-was-using-binary-space-partitioning-in-doom/ <comment><USER2> Here's a BSP tool - the originals for Doom were both in Objective-C and big- endian, so third party tools were used when the community made level editing tools

[http://games.moria.org.uk/games/doom/bsp/](http://games.moria.org.uk/games/doom/bsp/)

</comment><comment><USER3> > That story about Carmack applying cutting-edge academic research to video > games has always impressed me.... He deserves to be known as the archetypal > genius video game programmer for all sorts of reasons, but this episode with > the academic papers and the binary space partitioning is the justification I > think of first.

I'm not throwing shade on Carmack when I say that the reason the author states seems to me to be evidence, taken alone, of the exact opposite of the case that Carmack is "the archetypal genius video game programmer." Or, if it is, then it impugns the profession of video game programming, because, in most _real_ engineering fields, a literature review is the _first_ step, not the desperate measure taken after "creativity" has been exhausted. It seems to me that a better case can immediately be made that the originators of the technique are the real geniuses, having come up with the idea, and Carmack just adopted it. Geniuses create; the rest of us adopt, right?

Again, don't get me wrong: Carmack could program circles around me. (Or ellipses, or pentagons, or particle clouds, or fractals, or...) But affirming the consequent doesn't make him "a genius." He may or may not be, for other reasons, but 'applying a known technique' just can't be one of them.

<comment><USER4> You are forgetting a important detail here. If BSP was already succesfully used in games by a pioneer, you would be right. The question is, to recognize an algorithm and apply it, with the proper changes to a novel field, being the first to recognize this, in my experience at least, is not for the average intelligence.

We all have trouble with tagging someone a "genius", because its not clear what this is, or if we are using this too much and in a wrong way (and i think we do)

But i also need to remind you about the early nineties, and how hard was to get into information, papers and research, compared to now. Also the limitation of the computers back then forcing people like Carmack to use very clever algorithms to thrive. We always need to take the context people were in to properly estimate this kind of things.

By the way, he did not just solved that, but a lot of other hard problems with different, successful outcomes.. So its not just because of the BSP he have this level of recognition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once again Seth Teller (rip) gets slighted in the name of mythbuilding around Id Software and Carmack -- zero mentions in Masters of Doom, zero mentions here (at least some prior art was mentioned, progress I suppose). Perhaps the 2020s will be ready for a measured history of programming without all the Great Men gloating.

<comment><USER6> It's nice if you could link us a good article on the guy, I'd love to read it.</comment></comment>


Instagram Stories hits 200M users, surpassing Snapchat - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/13/instagram-stories-bigger-than-snapchat/ <comment> trevor-e I think this is well deserved. Instagram Story's experience to me is way nicer and more complete since it integrates perfectly with their core photo sharing product. After I'm done viewing snaps I have on Snapchat, what else is there left to do? With Instagram, I can look at my photo feed and go to people's profiles, and all of the back-navigation works perfectly. Meanwhile, Snapchat's app is slow, buggy, and doesn't even take nice pictures. Other than the more gimmicky features, such as face filters which will inevitably come to Instagram, the product feels way behind.

<comment><USER4> Instagram is oriented towards consumption; when you open it, it takes you to your feed, and as you mention after posting or viewing stories it makes it easy to consume more.

Snapchat is oriented towards creation. When you open it, it starts on the camera.

<comment><USER5> There's more to consumption and creation. Snapchat is ephemeral and fun - <USER2> you're somewhere and thinking "this would be a great snap" so it makes sense to open to the camera.

Instagram is so much more self-regulated and bound in crafting identity. You're right in that it's much more focused on consuming since the barrier to posting is much higher than snapping.

<comment><USER6> I'd agree with you but in the past year there's been a trend of making fake Instagram accounts (finsta's).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Instagram is a social network where the best effect occurs when your account is public: you get social validation from a large audience liking your content on its merits, the sum of all your content forms a persistent feed, and your followers form a closer inner core with whom the nature of interaction is more immediate. This tends to be most rewarding for people who can attract a large number of likes; this number of likes is displayed to anyone who can see the content.

Snapchat is the inverse, where the content is aimed at one's followers, but one can submit notable content to be featured in the company-curated Discover section (about major events, for example). There is no public aggregation, there is no public display of likes.

The two platforms are still differentiated by their design philosophies, and in North America there is significant overlap in the userbase.

The danger, of course, is that once Instagram has cloned enough of Snapchat's functionality, the same users won't need to switch to Snapchat anymore to get the close-knit experience. Similarly, Snapchat may feel pressured to up its parity with Instagram in turn, by adding public features that are very different from its current model. In either case, the networks will have iterated themselves into equivalence [1], making the exact provider irrelevant and making pure network effects be the the deciding factor more often that not -- which gives an advantage to larger players.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168804](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168804)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm sure most people would disagree but Snapchat was done the moment they released stories.

I say this despite the fact that stories was what really brought stratospheric growth to snapchat, because i'm taking into account opportunity cost.

They could have focused on making their core (1-1 messaging) better but they decided to become a broadcast media company, starting with stories and then those brand videos.

This has always been risky. Even at its peak when you look at what was happening on Snapchat stories, a lot of these microcelebrities on snapchat would use stories as a way to get more likes or follows on their instagram. They say stuff like "Hey i just posted a new photo on instagram, please like it!" etc. This was convenient for them because these needy behaviors go away on snapchat stories.

The moment snapchat decided to become 1:many, they became a serious threat to Facebook in pretty obvious ways, so it was no brainer that Facebook jumped to do something about it. And at the same time, you can't compete with Facebook on 1:many broadcast.

They should have focused on 1:1 and fought on their own turf. Sure it would have been harder to figure out the viral growth, but it was already doing well so I'm sure they could have figured out some way without jumping into Facebook's playground.

<comment><USER9> I respectfully disagree with almost every part of your post.

1\. Snapchat is not done. Millions of active users in advertiser-desired demographics is not done. Instagram has blunted its growth, but Snapchat is still alive and well.

2\. Snapchat is a social platform, not a broadcast media company. There is a difference- they're not making their own content.

3\. Snapchat was always a threat to Facebook, regardless of whether it was 1:1 or 1:many messaging. Snapchat competes for finite resources: digital ad dollars and user attention by way of socialization. This is how Facebook's business works as well, making them inherent competitors. If you're snapping a selfie to a friend then you're not seeing ads in the Facebook app.

You may be right about Snapchat not being able to compete against Facebook in the long run. Facebook certainly demonstrated the power of owning the largest social network when they cloned Stories. They can copy good ideas and roll them out to billions of users instantly. Maybe Snapchat can compete with that, maybe not.

4\. Exactly what Snapchat's turf consists of is an open question I don't think any of us know the answer to. You seem to think its turf is 1:1 messaging, but Spiegel thinks it's being a camera company. After seeing Spectacles, god only knows where they'll go next. Besides, why stay in one bit of "turf" when you can expand?

[https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats- ladder/](https://stratechery.com/2016/snapchats-ladder/)

<comment><USER8> > 1\. Snapchat is not done

I will agree with you on this one. Maybe I was too aggressive in my expression. But the point I was making was they made a mistake by deciding to fight on Facebook's turf.

> 2\. Snapchat is a social platform, not a broadcast media company. There is a > difference- they're not making their own content.

Maybe you haven't used Snapchat recently? Just check out the "discover" feature. Also you're using the term "broadcast" differently than how I'm using it.

> but Spiegel thinks it's being a camera company.

I respectfully want to say you're believing too much of what PR people tell you. "Camera company" doesn't suddenly make the company more compelling. It only becomes compelling when they have a solid business model to support that vision. Spectacles is nothing more than an SoCal phenomenon. Good job for pulling off that scarcity marketing but that doesn't change the fact that most people don't want to walk around wearing a douchy pair of sunglasses everyday.

Overall I think you're making arguments about unimportant details. My main point was Snapchat should have focused on scaling their core experience that was truly unique. Instead they stepped into a territory where it can be replicated by anyone else. I'm not just talking about Facebook. Just look around the world and you'll see snapchat clones popping up (or soon will). Snapchat should have owned that entire global market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Would be interesting to see the demographics on those users. My understanding is that if you're under 25, you use SnapChat, and if you're over 25, you can't figure out how the hell to use SnapChat. Instagram Stories may've exploded into the demographic that doesn't use SnapChat. This is possibly supported by the comments here about Instagram's UI being a lot nicer; most of us on HN are in the demographic above SnapChat users.

If this is the case, it's not as damning for SnapChat as it seems, at least until some younger, hotter social app bumps them off the pedestal in a few years. Young users get older, but older users don't get any younger. My understanding is that SnapChat's inscrutable UI is deliberate: they want you to have to be shown how to use SnapChat by someone already on it, to avoid the "My grandmother's on Facebook, how uncool is that?" problem.

<comment><USER11> > My understanding is that SnapChat's inscrutable UI is deliberate: they want > you to have to be shown how to use SnapChat by someone already on it, to > avoid the "My grandmother's on Facebook, how uncool is that?" problem.

Couldn't agree more

It's evident by most of the comments here

Instagram / Facebook / WhatsApp will not get that < 25 demography

I doubt Instagram counts this as _success_. They didn't get any _new_ users - that was the main goal when mimicking Snapchat

<comment><USER12> Older people have all the money (in America at least) so Instagram may be ok with that.

<comment><USER10> Usually brand advertising tries to skew young (even towards children, if the FTC lets them get away with it) because brand preferences are usually set in the teens and early 20s and then people purchase things on autopilot.

This may be why SnapChat has targeted brand advertisers rather than the more targeted advertisements that Facebook/Google go after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The biggest question about Facebook has been whether they can stay relevant in the face of an onslaught of cooler apps in the future. The biggest test of this so far was Snapchat and they've managed to ethically out compete them with flying colors. Credit where credit is due, kudos to Facebook and the doubts about future relevance should be put to bed now.

<comment><USER14> meh, making what is essentially a complete clone of snapchat within Instagram hardly seems like "ethically out-competing them" in my opinion. They took the ideas directly from Snapchat and just stuck them in an app that already has a huge sticky userbase, relying on the convenience factor to get people to use it.

Totally made up and arbitrary example but it would be like if Starbucks started serving some widely popular menu item based on a recipe from a competing chain. They already have a huge loyal customer base that's coming into their stores all the time, so it's more convenient for these people to get this new item at Starbucks since they're going there anyway, but Starbucks didn't come up with the idea or recipe, they just saw that it was popular elsewhere and knew they could leverage the convenience factor to get people to buy it from their stores (which people were already coming to) instead of going to a second store for it. That's not really ethical competition.

<comment><USER15> Why not? At the risk of sounding like a hand-wringing capitalist, at the end of the day, isn't the purpose of a business to charge money in exchange for providing a good or service that is useful to a customer? If Starbucks can greater serve the needs of their customers by providing a new item (regardless of where they got the idea from), then why shouldn't they? Some might argue that they are actually doing their customers a disservice by not providing it and making them go elsewhere.

<comment><USER16> Except Facebook doesn't charge money. I wish they would.

<comment><USER15> Neither does Snapchat, but I don't see how that changes the argument anyway. If Facebook greater serves its users needs, then that brings in more users who spend more time on its network of apps which greater serves its paying customers (advertisers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On the other hand, Facebook's thirsty attempt at pushing the same feature in all of their apps is both fragmented and ham-handed. It seems to have landed with a thud - I have seen exactly one contact post a Story in either the Facebook or Messenger apps. They've now started posting greyed-out profile pictures of frequent contacts to make the space seem popular, seemingly encouraging the user to use the feature to contact those people. It seems sad, frankly.

<comment><USER18> +1 on greyed out icons of frequent contacts. Cringed and closed app a few times due to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Instagram stories are more accessible than Snapchat stories. Snapchat has one of the most bizarre UIs I've ever seen in my life. I was so confused when I opened it the first time. Main screen defaults to the camera instead of showing the stories. That's probably because it's a camera app more than a social media one. Previously there were only icons, now there's a bit of text to describe things. That's good but it's just not a very interesting product anymore.

<comment><USER20> Or maybe you are just not the target audience for the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how much of this is Instagram stealing Snapchat's userbase and how much is it simply converting its existing userbase over to using Snapchat's new innovative features.

If Instagram has more users than Snapchat, saying "Instagram's Snapchat feature has more users than Snapchat" isn't really as significant as it sounds, and doesn't _necessarily_ represent any erosion of their userbase or threaten their growth.

Of course their userbases are not mutually exclusive, but I do get the impression there's a rough demographic separation.

<comment><USER22> It does call into question the value of Snapchat if competitors can execute seemingly just as well on the platform. Owning Facebook seems like a cheaper and safer bet than Snap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why I still prefer Snapchat:

1\. After launching the app I am right in the take-a-picture mode. With Instagram I need one or two touches.

2\. Different DNA, different circles

3\. Pics to one or several people is way better and faster than on Instagram.

Only because they share the stories features doesn't mean they are interchangeable. They are still different products.

Even if Instagram has more MAUs on the stories feature Instagram's DNA gets dilluted with the integration of the story feature. Random, inflationary and non-glossy media wasn't part of Instagrams previous shiny DNA and experience.

<comment><USER24> > 1\. After launching the app I am right in the take-a-picture mode. With > Instagram I need one or two touches.

i prefer taking pictures with the usual camera app on my phone (double table the home button -> done) and then post on stories/instagram.

that way i have the pic itself full size + other people can see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I believe both platforms will thrive because they target different audiences. Most people seem to prefer Instagram for their "professional" persona while keeping Snapchat for their "real" self. This is credit to Snapchat's "silly and fun" interface and brand in comparison to Instagram's more minimalistic one. Furthermore, Instagram will always have some pull due to its network effects.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a young 20 something, Snapchat stories is still dominant among my social circle and other social circles I encounter. No one I know uses Instagram stories heavily. I even have a few friends with Spectacles.

Snapchat's app is absolutely shit on anything except an iPhone though and even casual users I know mention this.

</comment><comment> vhost- I decided to download snapchat and try it a couple months ago to see what all the fuss was about. I might be a black sheep here, but it was really confusing. I had no idea how to use it. And I've been building software for 15 years too.

I can completely understand Instagram, so I was happy they added stories. It's really easy to use and the functionality seems intuitive.

<comment><USER27> There's an argument that the success of Snapchat was in part because of it's confusing interface. By adding a barrier to entry that younger generations were willing to accept but older ones might not, it kept the older generations (parents) off and kept the decidedly edgy platform popular with it's core, unlike Facebook where you're socially obligated to 'friend' your parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a user of both Instagram and Snapchat, this doesn't surprise me. The UX for the Instagram stories functionality is pleasantly at the top of the normal UI, but Snapchat's UX is really quite hostile, and even though I'm very familiar with it, it continue to be unpleasant to use.

Add in that Instagram's typical user base is much more broad (Snapchat tends to be most popular with young tweens, whereas Instagram's user base is just about everybody), and you have one actively hostile interface in an already small market against a much more friendly interface in an almost unrestricted market.

</comment><comment><USER29> As impressive as it may sound, this is pretty shocking for the state of the industry.

An innovative, new upshot getting sucked up/ blatantly ripped off by an established player with more muscle, money (and in this case - users) to throw at the problem is not a great incentive for entrepreneurs.

Consolidation at this level resembles communism more closely than the kind of free market innovation we should be seeing.

[http://avc.com/2017/02/the-end-of-the-level-playing- field/](http://avc.com/2017/02/the-end-of-the-level-playing-field/)

<comment><USER30> Totally in agreement here. I think this is actually a much bigger deal than anyone imagines.

It shows that even if you create a HUGE new thing, you're probably going to get killed by the big ones. There is no competing anymore - you either assimilate through acquisition or get squeezed to death on the back end because the incumbents have the cash, data and talent.

So what the hell is venture supposed to do in this landscape? I'm genuinely curious. If the goal of venture money is to build IPO level companies - <USER3> one off acquisitions - then what is the move here?

I even remarked as such a few days ago: [https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/851840701214208002](https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/851840701214208002)

<comment><USER31> Re-read The Innovators Dilemma. Startups built on just having better technology or product rarely ever work. You need to compete on an axis that the incumbent _can 't_ compete on. The incumbent should be looking at your startup, be aware of what you are doing, and be unable to copy it because doing so would break their existing (profitable) business.

If you are relying on outcompeting the incumbent directly you are in for a really tough fight.

<comment><USER30> Really the point I am making is that they have the ability to cover all axes because the information they have about each is so deep and their tentacles are everywhere in some form. Remember too, they don't need to brand a product with "Google" to be dominant in it. They just need to make sure that whatever startup is playing in the space is using a google product, be it GoLang, Tensorflow, etc... or has investment from GV

Technology: Check

Personnel: Check

Funding: Check

Consumer Understanding: Check

Industry Knowledge: Check

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm not the target audience, clearly. I'll get notifications from Instagram "So and so posted a story!" and I'll swipe left to clear it off my notification screen without ever even thinking about it again. Snapchat stories, the only ones I watch (and it's a rarity that I'll even watch them at all) are sports updates.

So. That being said: just curious what the appeal is for others. What is it _you_ like about stories, what about the feature-other than it ostensibly being a video-is so engaging about these things?

<comment><USER33> It's not the video, it's about the community. You send a small video to your friends that you make in 5s with some silly shit.

I don't see how this fits with the 'hey world, look at my perfect life' photos of Instagram.

My guess is that it's as much a move to force people into a feed where they are forced to interact more with ads since IG ads don't perform well as show investors they compete with Snapchat.

I don't see an exodus of Snapchat users to Instagram.

<comment><USER34> >> I don't see how this fits with the 'hey world, look at my perfect life' photos of Instagram.

That's the whole point. With Instagram Stories, you can now do both. My public feed that stick has nice curated pictures, while my Stories have goofy every- day, even mundane stuff that will disappear in 24 hrs. It is the perfect duality.

<comment><USER35> Snapchat really focuses on personal interaction, it's hard to grok unless you really understand the full features of both apps and have used them quite a bit. Streaks, friend trophies, snapscores, read receipts, the scarcity factor of the media, these all seem like small features but they're a major appeal on the platform.

Instagram is more public facing and has the same boasty/gaudy problems that fb/twitter has. Instagram can replicate the features of snapchat but it's really trying to do too much, it's cluttered and overburdened. Not to mention the advertisements, fake personas, novelty accounts and hidden shills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's not completely surprising. They did an amazing job to deploy this feature. It's directly available (perfect to attract new users) and it works like a charm. I used Snapchat and I loved it, but UX is a pain. It's incredibly heavy and slow, even on a good phone. It's the reason I uninstalled it twice and won't reinstall it. While on Instagram, the user experience is good. Probably leaving the camera on with effects is not a good choice.

PS: please WhatsApp, remove stories. It's not the place for it.

</comment><comment><USER37> I like stories on instagram because its not intrusive, unlike messenger, facebook, and whatsapp. The reason I still use snapchat and pretty much boycott stories that get handed out by facebook is because it feels like they're using dark UI practices to force it down my throat.

Why does messenger open up my camera when I launch it? Why does it ask me to put pictures that I send my friends on my public story? Why do peoples stories take half of my messenger screen? It's really intrusive, and incredibly annoying.

<comment><USER33> STORIES! STORIES! EVERYWHERE STORIES NOW EVEN THOUGH NO-ONE IS USING THEM

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> 1.Does this compare SNAPchat US/UK users with INSTA US/UK users?

2\. INSTA has users across the world and in countries where their unit economics is a loss.

3\. Nobody makes ad profit from India/Brazil/Vietnam. SNAP wants to redefine how valuation is done.

4\. Having billion users is a wrong metric altogether when most users doesn't generate revenue. And yes, companies will always promise they will generate revenue in 10 years or some BS.

<comment><USER39> Relevant username. But your #4 is silly, SNAP stock's valuation is exactly so high because of "that BS" that you are complaining about other companies doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Because Snapchat is only for rich people: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3324753/snapchat-boss-even- spe...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3324753/snapchat-boss-even-speigel-said- app-is-only-for-rich-people-former-employee-alleges/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Where does the "no patents in software" position stand in relation to this story? Does it refer purely software (AKA Oracle v Google) or is it also design and experiences like stories?

</comment><comment><USER42> The hacker news title is incorrect. The metric is DAUs not MAUS. dang can you please correct?

I believe the article was changed after being published.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'd be really interested to see how many of those 200M users are actually people.

Instagram novelty/celeb/art/bs accounts are all over the place, it's fairly lucrative to push products on the hot trend of the day and the whole platform is pretty spammy.

Snapchat doesn't really have this problem, you don't interact with people you don't know unless you seek them out. There is no easy way to add randoms on snapchat, users tend to be actual users.

</comment><comment><USER43> Outside their app snapchat as close to zero visibility. No share buttons on the web, no snap ghosts in commercials (like "add us on facebook"), nothing. They really have to come up with something there.

When Facebook had their IPO everyone argued about them having no revenue, but they still had user growth, when Snap started they already had no user growth. This combined with no revenue... Wall Street does not approve!

<comment><USER44> "Outside their app snapchat as close to zero visibility. No share buttons on the web, no snap ghosts in commercials (like "add us on facebook")..."

That's exactly the point. Snapchat has absolutely no interest in associating themselves with Facebook. Snapchat caters to a entirely different demographic, and being anti-Facebook is a large part of the appeal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow, this is brutal. I wonder how Snap is going to make it out of this.

</comment><comment><USER46> Facebook's vassalization of Instagram was brilliant, in retrospect. Facebook is free to pursue its imperial ambitions while Instagram follows the much quicker and looser edge/leader features demanded by the market of Snap/IG/etc.

</comment><comment><USER47> I remember reading Instagram blog posts and having a sense that engineering the product well was something they held to high importance. Since then they've been acquired by Facebook but their team still seems driven by those kinds of values.

</comment><comment><USER48> The UI is excellent, you can pause, go back and the cues are great to capture attention

</comment><comment><USER49> In an alternate universe Instagram never got bought by Facebook, so Snap never had room to grow.

But, then again, in same alternate universe YouTube never got bought by Google, so Facebook never had room to grow.

Think alternate universes don't make sense?

Does this one does?

</comment><comment><USER50> MAU isn't a great metric, I'd prefer to see both platforms' DAU

</comment><comment><USER51> Long-time lurker here...

I don't understand how Facebook cloning Snapchat is any different from Chinese startups cloning various American apps. Why is cloning frowned-upon only when the Chinese do it?

</comment><comment><USER52> Will Snapchat ever start selling to enterprise?

Taking their existing AR technology and apply to, let's say aircraft technicians. Snapchat + Boeing partnership?

</comment><comment><USER53> For the record, both myself and my partner 'used' stories this month, only to say 'yuck, can I turn this off?'

But hey, you gotta show off those metrics.

</comment><comment><USER54> for whats its worth a lot of cool people/influencers are still using Snapchat over Instagram, Kardashians, DJ Khaled, etc, this metric doesn't reflect my reality, I wouldn't sell any $SNAP shares, I'm more likely to buy after a dip when metrics like these are presented to the public, once people see revenue the price will pick up again

</comment><comment><USER55> Mark bought Instagram for 1 billion and now it's probably worth maybe 25. That was a pretty genius move by him.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm hoping snapchat wins, its easy for FB with tons of money to just copy another company

</comment><comment><USER57> Snapchat clearly went out of their way to ignore Android users, Instagram works so much better.

</comment><comment><USER58> I can't think of a bull case for Snapchat, but admittedly I am not the target demographic.

</comment><comment><USER59> Pinning stickers! I am so glad the USA is still leading in innovation. Thank you to all the hard workers who devoted their time to solving this problem as opposed to working on some vague or diffuse health-related issue. The world is so much better now that we can pin stickers on instagram gifs.

<comment><USER60> This is not just a tiresome sneer, but a myopic one.

Leave aside that interpersonal communication is one of the most fundamental of human needs, and thus any new medium or mechanism that enables people to do that more effectively and enjoyably is valuable.

What matters more is that many of the the technologies that have been developed by companies like Google and Facebook, in order to ( _sneer_ ) get people to click on more ads, or ( _sneer_ ) let teenagers share duckfaced, princess-filtered selfies with their friends, have been open-sourced and can now be freely used by researchers working in medicine, climate science, energy, cleantech, particle physics, etc.

I'll bet the medical researchers who are using TensorFlow to improve cancer detection [1], or the CERN researchers who use Cassandra to store and process data gathered in the ATLAS experiment [2], aren't sneering when they see Google and Facebook doing things that make themselves more popular and commercially successful.

[1] [https://blog.altoros.com/tensorflow-and-openpower-driving- fa...](https://blog.altoros.com/tensorflow-and-openpower-driving-faster- cancer-recognition-and-diagnosis.html)

[2] [https://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1432912](https://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1432912)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> What do you think is going to be Snapchat's next move?

</comment><comment><USER62> How are these claims verified?

</comment><comment><USER63> what is "MAU"?

<comment><USER64> Monthly Active Users

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> this is why snap is not a good stock purchase until the inevitable tech dip comes -- say another 6-12 mo will be ripe to buy?

<comment><USER66> "inevitable tech dip" A dip in stock is inevitable? Sounds like you should be shorting the stock if you somehow know better than investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> What Instagram is doing is borderline illegal.

Facebook sat in stasis for years without innovating their products. Now they are using their incumbent position to steal every single snapchat feature with impunity.

Of course that's par for the course in tech. Where the giant companies throw their weight around to crush competition.

Will there be an antitrust suit?

<comment><USER68> There is nothing immoral about what they are doing. Why should snapchat have a monopoly on functionality?

<comment><USER67> Facebook is the one with a monopoly. They're clearly abusing their privileged position to stifle competition.

It also sets a very poor precedent for entrepreneurial people.

<comment><USER69> So your argument is that monopolies are illegal? hahaha go back to wikipedia you're regurgitating some media version of a Microsoft case that you never read yourself

<comment><USER70> We've banned this account for violating the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Nice-looking Python bindings to V8 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tbodt/v8py <comment><USER2> This allows for calling synchronous JS functions from Python but not async JS functions, right? PyExecJS [0] also doesn't work with async JS, but Js2Py [1] might.

[0] [https://github.com/doloopwhile/PyExecJS/issues/20](https://github.com/doloopwhile/PyExecJS/issues/20) [1] [https://github.com/PiotrDabkowski/Js2Py/blob/05e77f0d4ffe91e...](https://github.com/PiotrDabkowski/Js2Py/blob/05e77f0d4ffe91ef418a93860e666962cfd193b8/tests/includes/timer.js)

<comment><USER3> "Write Python APIs, then call them from JavaScript using the V8 engine"

<comment><USER2> The author says it works both ways [0] (e.g., this test [1]), but I don't see a test with Python calling async JS.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14596163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14596163) [1] [https://github.com/tbodt/v8py/blob/3c727584df684540ce30f2572...](https://github.com/tbodt/v8py/blob/3c727584df684540ce30f257201cb648f2c41e7a/tests/test_convert.py)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice! I hadn't tested it yet, but I remember trying to run V8 in Python and it was a real mess - I think that even building it was problematic. I might use this project one day. Did you compare your bindings to alternatives?

<comment><USER3> If I get it correctly this is V8Py meaning it allows javascript (V8) to call Python scripts, not the other way around.

"Write Python APIs, then call them from JavaScript using the V8 engine"

<comment><USER5> That's what I took that phrase to mean, but if you look at the example in the read me, it appears to be the other way around. Writing python, defining a method, then wrapping that method in a V8 context and running it from within python.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's both!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anybody tell what's going on with the v8py/kappa.{cpp,h} files?

<comment><USER7> "// Meme header file. Every project should have one of these. Kappa Kappa Kappa"

<comment><USER8> I'm a fan of humour in comments, easter-eggs, etc... but for no good reason, this bothers me.

<comment><USER9> It's forced humor, and a misapplied un-funny version of mildly funny nerd humor at that. It gives me the same kind of chills that I get from people who wear "I <3 bacon" type t-shirts.

<comment><USER10> In Spanish we have an expression for the way you feel: "vergüenza ajena", which loosely translates to "feeling the embarrassment someone else should feel for their actions." It's pretty nifty, if not very catchy :P

<comment><USER11> Apparently it's "fremdscham" in German.

<comment><USER10> See, that's catchier! Now we are talking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I might be missing something, but can you show an example of calling the API from javascript?

You seem to be writing it in python and then calling it from within python in the example.

<comment><AUTHOR> context.eval runs JavaScript, which in the example is calling the Python API. expose adds an object into the global JavaScript space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Silly question. Can I use this to interact with a machine learning model written in python from javascript on react native ? It'd be great if someone could point out the feasibility/limitations

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's for running javascript from a python program and allowing that javascript to call python code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wouldn't it be more performant and less awkward to compile python to JS? Or is it for importing JS code into your python program? Well, why don't compile JS to Python then?

<comment><USER15> If JS code expects to be JITed then transpiled in Python would be quite slow. Transpiling Python to JS is difficult and loses access to various ecosystems e.g. scientific Python.

Having the two runtimes coupled seems to be the ideal way to run both languages in the same process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting. Could this be used to use SciPy stuff from JavaScript?

</comment><comment><USER17> there are a LOT of Sublime Text plugins that depend on this.

EDIT: nevermind. i'm dyslexic

<comment><AUTHOR> are you thinking of pyv8?

<comment><USER17> damn, yep. good call.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Odin – The Programmable, Observable and Distributed Job Scheduler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/theycallmemac/odin <comment><USER2> The idea of observability hooks are a nice feature.

Nice job on this, looks fully featured, would like to see a Ruby SDK though

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this different to Airlow, k8s jobs or cronjobs exactly?

</comment><comment><USER4> What role does MongoDB serve and why use MongoDB instead of Badger?</comment>


How to Ping Specific Port Number - <AUTHOR> https://devconnected.com/how-to-ping-specific-port-number/ <comment><USER2> The answer: you can't. Ping, or ICMP echo request, does not even let you choose a pott to send to. The closet thing to "port ping", is what the article suggested, a TCP connectivity test (and measure the RTT/2 as the latency.)</comment>


Nerds and Jocks - <AUTHOR> http://nat.org/blog/2009/07/nerds-and-jocks/ <comment><USER2> Preaching to choir. Hacker News is like the nerdiest of nerds.

Seriously, I came from Ukraine when I was 12 and being an out-of-shape immigrant and a nerd made my life in American school a living hell.

The problem I remember having the most was isolation. It's interesting because people did make fun of me in Ukraine all the time, but we made fun of everyone and were pretty much all friends, we conversed a lot, even when we were fighting.

In U.S. it's just different, people ignore you. Spending 8 hours in a place where no one talks to you except for teacher (and several accidental buddies) is pretty miserable. I often thought it'd be easier if I was bullied, at least someone would fucking notice me. Took me a around 4-5 years before I became a misantrophist and just started hating everyone by default and that's sort of how I managed living here.

<comment><USER3> _Hacker News is like the nerdiest of nerds._

Dungeons and Dragons players, Star Trek geeks, anime fans, weapons geeks, LARPers, fantasy enthusiasts. Wanting to make money instantly boots you a step or two above the absolute dregs.

<comment><USER4> I think you've mistaken nerds for dweebs.

<comment><USER3> Please let's not argue terminology. Article opening:

 _Growing up without any noticeable athletic skills, the nerd-jock duality was a pretty important part of my childhood. Nerds were the kids who carried calculators, wore glasses, dressed poorly, read books for fun, liked to be right in class, and had few friends. Jocks were athletic, well dressed, and popular, but probably stupid as well. Every person in my class could have listed, by name, the "nerds" and the "jocks" among our classmates, and if we'd transferred to a different school, we could have identified them on sight. It was, for me, and I suspect for many other kids like me, the primary sorting system for my peers_

He's talking "cool kid" versus "uncool kid." End of discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Let's keep things in perspective. America is 10 million square kilometers, 4 million square miles, so there are lots of communities that value smarts.

My freshman year college roommate was on his HS football team, captain of the math team, and knew the difference between synecdoche and metonymy.

That said, it's appalling how freely people joke that they're bad at arithmetic, when they wouldn't joke so freely that they're bad at, say, being able to read.

<comment><USER6> I agree; probably the article is excessively polemicized. I do think the author has a point, but he oversimplifies in making it a black and white, us vs germany thing.

I think the biggest difference is that it seems that in US schools, due to the high risks teachers face from litigation and the various incentive structures, the situation has degenerated to an "inmates running the asylum" scenario. The teachers, simply put, lack the ability to impose some minimum level of order and discipline, and the worst are allowed to run amok to the detriment of all of those remaining in the class. The focus in education in the last twenty years has always been "not leaving someone behind", and of course that sounds at worst anodyne if not downright saintly. Sadly, "not leaving someone behind" is in practical terms often paid for by the good students not being able to pay attention during class or being harrassed by the bad kids.

I think it is probably along this dimension where there is the greatest disparity between the US and Europe. In Europe, at least to my mind, there seems to be more deference to authority, in particular to the teacher. Just as a silly example: in the US, there was a recent supreme court case where some kid had a banner that said "Bong Hits For Jesus" at a school event. The kid was ordered to remove the banner and IIRC was suspended or the like; nothing huge. So he took the school all the way to the supreme court! Aside from the absurd legal waste here, and despite the fact that he lost his appeal, what strikes me is the sense of entitlement. I don't think it would even cross a French or German high school student's mind to try to pull a stunt like that.

On the other hand, US universities are the envy of the world --- and the concentration of US universities in the FT top universities ranking is evidence of that -- and there is no shortage of nerd glorification at these institutions. Also one need look no further than Silicon Valley to conclude that the situation for the US is far from lost.

Finally, I would add that, in respect of high school education, it does seem that in more than a few places Europe is regressing in performance, and for much the same reason as the US and indeed many other countries: we've relaxed the system, made it easier for students, in particular the bad and disruptive ones, with predictable results. Not that I'm advocating a return to harsh punishment, sadistic teachers, militant drills, etc., but I think we need to think carefully about the overall incentives for students and teachers and ask if, in the current constellation, society is best served.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A few random comments ...

Sports are something that require initial talent followed by hard work and dedication to reach the point where you can earn a sensible living. However, some sports can be spectacles. People can watch and appreciate the skill and excitement. Getting large numbers of people watching can generate money, which can support the teams and players, and so talent/work/skill gets converted into money.

Engineering, math, science, etc., are something that require initial talent followed by hard work and dedication to reach the point where you can earn a sensible living. Turning them into a spectacle seems unlikely. Hence they will never generate mass appeal, or money from popularisation. People will never watch a scientist at work and appreciate the skill, and so will never, by that route, aspire to be a scientist (mathematician, engineer, hacker, physicist, etc).

All people know of science, and math in particular, is that it's hard, and they can't see the point. With sports they can see the potential for adulation, and enormous sums of money. Hence the "youth of today" aspire to be sports stars. Or celebrities.

Where are the celebrity geeks?

I have, and on occasion wear with pride, a "Nerd Pride" badge given to me by Gerald Jay Sussman. Maybe we should all be proud to say we're geeks/nerds/hackers/engineers and wear such labels with confidence.

For reference, Ron Graham worked his way through graduate school by performing in a circus with a trampoline troupe. Bela Bollobas represented Oxford University at modern pentathlon, and Cambridge University at fencing. Paul erdos was astonishingly good at table tennis, and these are not isolated examples. Many distinguished scientists and mathematicians are extremely good at sports.

</comment><comment><USER8> Question: does the nerd vs. jock divide _seriously_ exist?

I live in India, and back here being a nerd means you're a sort of minor celebrity. Doing well in school? You're the talk of the neighborhood. Doing well in school _and_ captain of the school Cricket/Football/Foo team? You're a minor god. Doing all this and _not_ aspiring to be an engineer? O NOES THE WORLD IZ ENDING!!1! U _HAZ_ TO B ENGINEER!!1!

Of course, being a hacker does not count for much. People understand a perfect marksheet. Nobody understands elegant Python. One of the reasons I'm "good at computers, but needs to work harder on academics".

<comment><USER9> > does the nerd vs. jock divide seriously exist?

Well, most of us, when answering that question, end up generalizing from one example. Either: "at my school, everyone was either a nerd or a jock; therefore, at all American schools, everyone is either a nerd or a jock." Or: "at my school, there was no divide between nerds and jocks; therefore, at all American schools, there is no divide between nerds and jocks."

In reality, who knows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> John Hodgman talked about the jock/nerd thing recently at the White House Correspondent's dinner. Most of the video is off-topic, but the conclusion has a similar theme to this post.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRGDY>

</comment><comment><USER11> What a load of bull. This comment is slander against the article because there's no substance there to even refute. Just nonsensical social and economic claims.

You should be better than to vote up any article which has "nerds" in the title, YC.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nerds. Represent.

That's one of the best things about being in Silicon Valley. Nerds have won the battle, and we rule here. It's actually a good thing to be a nerd here. "Coolness" tends to be based on what new technologies you're playing with and what you're building.

When I lived in Chicago, it was clear that the jocks ruled. Walking down Rush and Division (Sports Bar Mecca) on a Friday or Saturday night immediately gave me flashbacks of ninth grade. That was the year that I got 65 wedgies at boarding school.

<comment><USER13> I might have a unique insight here, as a CS Major/Software Engineering Minor, but if there's a personality difference between the average high school athlete and the C-level executives that actually run this town, I haven't seen or heard about it yet.

The "jock personality" is doing very well here.

The good news: jocks don't actually hate or even dislike nerds. Teammates of mine played World of Warcraft, loved gaming, and participated in numerous nerd pursuits. Throughout my football career I was deeply interested in Computer Science.

Nerds just need to figure out that the jock personality is actually useful, and figure out how to use it.

<comment><USER14> >Nerds just need to figure out that the jock personality is actually useful, and figure out how to use it.

I think that some people with tons of booksmarts don't see the value of streetsmarts. It is almost ironic, as one would think that all those booksmarts would lead to such a realization.

<comment><USER15> My streetsmarts are mainly the result of a deduction that the cultivation of such smarts is efficient and rational. Happy to go into this further, over email (zackster=gmail).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This observation has finally stopped making me wonder why the Super Bowl is such an important event here in America. I'm not a foreigner either, I just have never understood (let alone bothered to understand) what motivates your average sports fan to tune into ESPN on day-to-day basis as if it were news. . .

I think given the condition one can not adopt or subscribe to this _cultural profile_ of sports then one will inevitably pursue alternative cultural networks (enter the nerd) HN is just one of my many cultural outlets I tune into on a daily basis, thus I consider it part of my cultural profile.

This is why being a nerd, for me at least, is so appealing since _you_ (the nerd) not only subscribe to more than one cultural network as a viewer (reader) or fan, but you can participate in your culture's network as a player by simply knowing a language, picking a project, using the project, knowing the project, checking out the project's source, and committing your changes accordingly.

<comment><USER17> As explained by one of my always-been-popular friends, sports in America is more about getting the guys over and hanging out. Yes, women watch sports but for many guys who aren't hackers - watching sports and having beers may be the male gender equivalent of shopping for women. Socially-accepted ways to bond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "This is what happens when you don't stigmatize engineers: you get a country full of engineers, self-identifying as engineers, growing up dreaming of being engineers."

Er, no, this is what happens when the rest of the world won't allow you to have an army because of what you did when you had one.

Your engineers have nowhere else to go but into the private sector where they are much more visible.

In the U.S., many of the best and brightest end up in the military or government service. We don't know what many of them do. I guess that's the price we're still paying for winning World War II.

<comment><USER19> _"In the U.S., many of the best and brightest end up in the military or government service."_

Would you please care to provide examples?

If you said that the best and the brightest are funded by military and government, I'd agree. After all, that's what DARPA and NSF are for. But I have never met one bright person who enjoyed working for the U.S. military or government. Not one. They all quit their jobs after a while, and came back to academia, or the private sector.

<comment><USER20> I'm sure there are plenty of intelligent, power-hungry people working for our government in either a martial or administrative capacity. Dick Cheney is an example of such a person.

<comment><USER19> Your certainty that there are intelligent people working for the U.S. government stems from 1st hand experience, or does it stem from wishful thinking?

I thought Cheney was no longer in the government. And if he's so smart, why didn't he anticipate the Iraq quagmire? Maybe he desired one?

<comment><USER14> >And if he's so smart, why didn't he anticipate the Iraq quagmire? Maybe he desired one?

He desired and planned one.

<comment><USER19> That makes sense. A quagmire would provide the U.S. Military an excuse to stay in Iraq for years and control the Middle East's oil fields.

With NATO in Afghanistan and closer ties with the former Soviet republics in Eurasia, the U.S. could deny China land access to energy resources. The icing on the cake would be a major war against Iran. That would allow the U.S. to effectively control the world's energy resources.

<comment><USER14> Cheney and Bush have strong ties to many of the corporations making money in Iraq as a result of the conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This hilarious German saying from Judith (in the article's comments) deserved to be reposted here:

 _"Karohemd und Samenstau - der Mann studiert Maschinenbau." "Checkered shirt and lack of sex - the man is studying engineering."_

(The German rhymes nicely - say this in your best Bruno accent).

</comment><comment><USER22> Paul Graham's article about the phenomenon:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to do a listserv in 2018? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to start a series of founder events here in Brooklyn, like a monthly get together and happy hour.
I wanted to create a listserv-style group for everyone to join. Something where users could bbe given a web destination where they can get a little information about the group, fill out a form to apply, and then manage subscriptions to get discussions (in classic listserv style) or just announcements of the upcoming events only.
I know there's Google Groups and Yahoo Groups and Facebook and various social media solutions, but in the spirit of the times I'd like to pick a solution that I have a little more ownership and control of. With that said I don't feel like actually building/coding it.
Any advice? <comment><USER2> Discourse? It has a built-in "mailing list mode" that acts like a mailing list, but it also has a readable web archive, and you can pay them to host it for you.

[https://discourse.org/](https://discourse.org/)</comment>


Apple delays privacy feature in iOS 14 that would keep ad tracking at bay - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/3/21420176/apple-ios-14-tracking-permission-rule-developers-delay <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24366355)</comment>


"I got an email from Chase saying that all our assets are frozen" - <AUTHOR> http://jonstokes.com/2013/02/24/it-could-happen-to-you/ <comment><USER2> So random that this has popped up now. I should post an update, but I can do a quick one here. This is resolved, but here are the bullet points of what happened and what I learned:

\- All of my assets were not frozen. 99% of our assets are with Barclays, and we just use Chase so that we can have a local checking account. (Barclays doesn't do that in the US.) So everything tied to Chase and our credit cards were frozen because of the tax lien.

\- The source of the problem was my former CPA. He just screwed up. He's a nice guy who does a solid business in the decent-sized midwestern city where he's located, but for whatever reason of inattenion and/or lack of good enough training/information, he had me file in the wrong state. He also doesn't have any insurance (not required where he practices), so if MA hadn't been cool about waiving penalties and interest it may not have been possible for me to recover that from him by the time I paid legal fees, etc.

\- I got a great MA tax lawyer (Philip S. Olsen, now of Burns and Levinson), and he worked with the Mass. tax authorities to help them understand that I wasn't some seedy tax dodger and that this was the fault of my CPA.

Now, here's what I learned:

\- Ask your CPA if he or she has insurance, and for how much. Don't be shy, because this kind of thing could happen to you. And don't think that just because various professionals and bigwigs in town use them, that they're either not going to make a mistake or that they have insurance.

\- There is no bank or credit union, no matter how foreign or local, that would not have frozen my assets in response to the merest hint of a request from MA. Every financial institution in the world is going to roll over for a state government like that, and leave you to sort out of if the request was legit or not. There's no place to hide. So Chase isn't actually the bad guy here.

\- MA isn't really the bad guy either. The states are strapped for cash, and they're turning over every stone for revenue. What caught my CPA was a wrinkle in the tax law about where to file that for decades many CPAs ignored because the states didn't have the ability to find and go after such things. (MA was claiming that I owed "Massachusetts-sourced income" because Ars Technica LLC was technically headquartered in Malden.) But in today's world of desperate state governments and networked databases, no CPA can afford to be lazy about anything. To their credit, MA let me re-file and did not penalize. I had to pay state taxes twice for that year, though, because IL's books were closed for 2007 and they refused to even consider giving me back the money I erroneously paid them.

\- This stuff drags out. While our assets were unfrozen pretty quickly, it was the first week of this month that I finally got a letter from MA telling me that the tax lien was officially lifted and that I'm in the clear.

\- There is no statute of limitations on taxes. If they find something from literally 20 years ago, they can load it up with penalties and interest and absolutely crush you. So see the point above about making sure your CPA has a platinum-plated insurance policy.

<comment><USER3> On the last point, if the CPA retired 10 years ago, and some state government (e.g. CA) comes after you, does the CPA's insurance still work?

<comment><USER2> No idea. I thought of that question right after I posted it, as well. I'm assuming it does, but I should look into that. Like, if he quits paying the premium, does it just go away and then you're still screwed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're wondering (like I was) why MA thinks this guy owes anything at all, it's buried in the middle:

"Again, I hadn't lived there or worked there since 2003, but I did own part of a business that was headquartered in MA, and the state was using this fact to harass me for income tax money."

So is the MA tax bill based on the profits of that business, or is the state just using it to say "you should pay all your income tax here"? Regardless, his beef should be with MA rather than the bank. I'd hardly fault Chase for complying with a court order - if crossing a state line made you judgement proof, why wouldn't everyone just run up debts, move one state over, and start fresh?

<comment><USER5> OP claims "they have not sued me or sent me any sort of court order"

Edit: According to [0] they don't need to. They just send you a notice and if you don't respond in time they take what they want. It's not clear what constitutes responding or how to get the case into a court and out of an administrative process. I don't know about the out-of-state bank thing.

[0] [http://www.mass.gov/dor/businesses/help-and- resources/legal-...](http://www.mass.gov/dor/businesses/help-and- resources/legal-library/administrative-procedures/ap-631-the-collection- process.html)

<comment><USER6> This seems highly unlikely. I only spent one year of law school in MA, but i distinctly remember that any sort of prejudgment attachment required a court order.

<comment><USER5> I'd believe that, I didn't do a thorough search. But the document that claims to describe Mass DOR collections doesn't cover it.

<comment><USER6> FWIW: I can find state tax liens with these names on it, but it may or may not be in any way relate to this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post was from 2013. Has anyone heard from the author what might have happened lately?

<comment><USER8> There's an update on the blog post now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've had something similar to this happen with another state agency (not the state in which by business is incorporated). We had opened a tax account in another state as we intended to convert a contractor to an FTE, but we ended up terminating the worker's contract. Time passes, and Chase processes a levy on behalf of a collections agency authorized to collect for the state department of revenue. They had automatically been calculating tax owed for one FTE, even though we had never filed a statement indicating we were withholding. Then fees, interest, penalties, etc. added up and it made for a very bad day or two here.

It took a few calls between us, Chase and the state agency, and a simple form to get the levy order rescinded before Chase fulfilled it (30 days after their receipt, for most such orders). Our funds were released within minutes of calling them to confirm that the state sent them a fax rescinding the levy order.

I've heard numerous horror stories about dealing with Chase on matters like this. I didn't find those stories to be true, in our case. I suspect the author either handled it (one would hope), or closed his tax account and chalked it up to lessons learned (a regrettable, but understandable decision to avoid further anguish and just "be done with it").

<comment><USER9> Noticed the author's complaint at the end about recovering the funds. No massive legal fees are necessary to recover them if the agency rescinds the levy. Just a fairly simple request for refund. I think he, like many in this situation, got indignant and had a flame-out emotional response. The lack of follow up suggests that it wasn't ultimately as big of a deal as he thought, IMHO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like how this is from 2013 and yet there is still no update on that blog, the linked blog, or anywhere else as far as I can tell...

<comment><USER11> He obviously had all of his assets frozen and is unable to pay for Internet access any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:u4KJzfI...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:u4KJzfIeirwJ:jonstokes.com/2013/02/24/it- could-happen-to-you/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER13> This gives me yet another good reason to keep BECU[1] as my only bank for any non-trivial amount of money... it can be a pain if I need an ATM, but I can at least trust that they will generally be on my side.

[1] [https://becu.org](https://becu.org)

<comment><USER14> I know from living in Seattle that they're a reputable credit union, but the fact that their home page gives me a certificate error is a bad pattern that trains users to ignore scary red messages. (The problem is that the cert is for www.becu.org , not becu.org .)

<comment><USER15> I think its because they never intended to be linked to without the www.

<comment><USER16> That's not really an excuse. This is a pretty trivial thing to fix (update the cert, or force a redirect).

<comment><USER17> They do force a redirect on [http://becu.org/](http://becu.org/), but they can't really force a redirect on [https://becu.org/](https://becu.org/), because you would need to accept the mismatched name before you could get the redirect.

Although, I'm surprised they don't have an alternate name, most of the CA's I've worked with recently automatically add the naked domain as an alternate name when you order a cert with www

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FTA:

> Every financial institution in the world is going to roll over for a state > government like that, and leave you to sort out of if the request was legit > or not. There's no place to hide. So Chase isn't actually the bad guy here.

I don't see the logic here. Everyone does it, so it must not be bad? I don't agree.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, some of the state revenue agencies move _very_ quickly. NY claimed to have sent a notice (prior to their rather good online system they have today) and 14 days later they had taken the money.

Recently I've noticed a lot of very small bills originating from adjustments on years-old returns. These are things that probably should be disputed, but they are coming in at $100-$200, which is far less that I'd pay someone to research for even an hour.

Here's my question: if the revenue department is going to make rounding-error level adjustments, why don't they just send me an advance tax bill, with all of the calculations that I can verify, and I'll just pay it?

</comment><comment><USER20> Since the site is now down...

Original text is published here: [http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/chase-just-handed- ove...](http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/chase-just-handed-over-all-our- assets.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> The author mentions he keeps his money in a foreign bank that I presume the MA department of revenue cannot get at. Does anyone have any recommendations of overseas banks that are easy to open accounts with without travelling to said country.

<comment><USER2> See my above comment. It was just luck that they didn't get to the Barclays money, and yeah that's probably also because Barclays is foreign that the luck happened. But I wouldn't count on that. If I hadn't moved quickly to hire a good tax lawyer and then contact MA and start working on a resolution, they'd have found and frozen our Barclays assets eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Strangely enough, almost this exact same thing happened to me.

Apparently I was accountable for my ex-wife's tax bill (for a year in which we were not married) well after our divorce...in a state I never worked in.

<comment><USER23> Did you wind up having to pay?

<comment><USER22> Yep.

They just took it. I happened to have a little in savings, and had just gotten my paycheck the day they took everything...so they got a decent amount (relative to me at least).

Also, once they decide to take your money it's nearly impossible to get it back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> what was the part about keeping all their money in a foreign bank? that seemed random.

I wonder what else is going on?

</comment><comment><USER25> Honestly, the older I get, the more tempted I am to attach a safe to a corner of my house, close my bank accounts, and just store cash in the safe.

<comment><USER5> That's what civil asset forfeiture is for. That's drug money you got there you see.

(Never mind that if word gets out you will get robbed.)

<comment><USER26> that's what bitcoin is for. A cold wallet, encrypted and backed up in multiple places would solve that problem.

<comment><USER10> That's a great way of getting robbed even without anyone needing to take your money, you would be effectively giving it away.

For example, the closing price exactly one year ago today was $880. Yesterday it was $248. So if you had $20,000 in savings and put them into Bitcoin, you'd have $5,636 now. What a wonderful savings account a 75% loss...

I swear the only reason people keep suggesting Bitcoin as an "investment" is because it is a pyramid scheme and they themselves are already deeply in the red, and see bringing in others as their only saviour.

<comment><USER25> Exactly. As far as I'm concerned, anyone suggesting Bitcoin as a viable currency for investment is either not worth taking seriously or a con artist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I heard somewhere that when you stop living in a certain state (say California in mid 2014) you should still file state tax in California in 2016 to show that you made no income in 2015 in California. This is supposedly a recommended way to end your 'relationship' with the state.

Can anyone confirm this please?

<comment><USER28> I don't know about that but it helps to ask your CPA (also, get a CPA), and have proof (eg, lease / mortgage, etc) of residency handy. CA once went after me for income I had earned years before I'd ever lived there, and sorting that out was a mess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Could someone confirm that in this case using local small credit union would give certain protections in similar cases? i.e. credit union with branches in your home state only vs. having branches in most states like Bank of America or Chase does?

</comment><comment><USER30> It's shit like this that makes me want Bitcoin or one of the alternatives to succeed. I don't care if it ends up being worth $10 or $50K, as long as many people use it. The banking system is rotten to the core.

<comment><USER5> The government will take what it wants. If you have a house, they will take it. If you have a car, they will take it. Bits on a hard drive don't help if you can't hold property. They even got the Swiss banks to cough up American accounts.

<comment><USER31> If you operate in a system of currency you are agreeing to play by their rules. You don't have to do business in America, you can go anywhere you want. Is it harder? Possibly. Will you be a successful? Maybe not. Learn the system if you are going into business, don't just complain because you "don't like taxes".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is from Feb 2013. Was there ever any resolution?</comment>


How to Accomplish Big Things, Even When You Feel Small - <AUTHOR> https://unstoppable.me/accomplish-big-things/ <comment><USER3> Has anyone else given up TV and noticed beneficial effects?

"I replaced all TV time with reading time. TV is full of stories of murder, betrayal, and pain. It's riveting, but it also messes with your mind. Once I figured this out, I started going to the library every day instead of watching TV."

This part resonated with me and I want to give it a shot. I default to TV when I have nothing to do, but I recognize how passive and lazy it is. You basically outsource your thinking for a couple hours a day. And I hadn't thought about how the stories we watch might be subconsciously changing the way we think.

<comment><USER4> I eliminated TV 4 years ago and noticed these benefits:

\- Finished 3 years qualification in record time \- Doubled my salary \- Managed to complete 3 profitable side projects \- Improved my software development skills tenfold \- and more...

In the process, I lost friends. I used to host 300+ people parties. I doubt I can be able to bring together 20 people in one place for a party.

<comment><USER5> I am sure that you can rely more in those 20 people than 300+.

<comment><USER4> That's the beauty of it. I am left with real friends, not those who were hanging around me because I used to throw cool parties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How exactly does he make money? (sorry if I missed this in the article). As far as I could make out he is some kind of productivity guru?

Great story, but the writing has a very new age, 'will a new reality into existence' Tim Ferris productivity porn vibe to it, which makes me just a little cautious.

EDIT: added after scribing the above:

Some Googling reveals:

"Over the last decade, Jon helped build three of the most popular blogs in the world, Copy Blogger, KISSmetrics, and Boost Blog Traffic (now Smart Blogger). Collectively, they have garnered over 200 million page views, earning over $50 million in revenue.

His main passion is Smart Blogger (fomerly Boost Blog Traffic) of which he is founder and CEO."

He seems to make money from devising traffic increase strategies for blogs and training courses for bloggers (at least that is what I could make out)

<comment><USER7> >...Tim Ferris ...

The most regrettable thing about Tim Ferris is his popularity essentially annihilated discoverability for a great science writer with essentially the same name.

<comment><USER8> Can you share a link please?

<comment><USER9> I'm guessing it's [https://www.timothyferris.com/](https://www.timothyferris.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great article! I admire him for not giving up and even becoming a successful entrepreneur under these severe circumstances.

Yet, I'd like to post a warning here. Putting the metaphoric gun to your head, as the article suggests, may sometimes be the only feasible option, but it can also lead to psychological problems later on. Not everything works better with force. In fact, there are things that require the opposite. It's easy to unlearn that when you put yourself under constant force and pressure, and your success becomes based on that solely.

<comment><USER11> I feel like the gun to the head thing is a good way to get started on things, which is what people struggle with the most. If you put a gun to your head trying to learn or study something and you're hating it you won't get great results, if you overcome your initial inertia against starting and find you enjoy then I think depending on the enjoyment is likely better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone have tips on self imposing pressure? I perform extraordinary under pressure. Literally, I become unstoppable. However, I have a bad habit of rationalizing (almost in a Nietzsche way) that the pressure is artificial if self induced, and it won't work. I can't pscyhe myself out.

<comment><USER13> It depends on your situation.

Part of mine is that I've had 3 bosses straight up steal money from me over the years. So the fear/pain of getting screwed by another boss is greater than the pain of starting a company.

Apart from that, I don't know about you, but I came to the realization of how short life is awhile back. You have 70 or so years to do your thing, then that's it. You're dead. For me at least, the pain of dying and not having done anything with my life, is more than the short-term pain of working on your dream.

So I don't know man. I'd say it's more what do you want out of life vs self imposing pressure.

<comment><USER8> This is a profound and compelling perspective. Thanks for sharing, I have quite a bit of things to rethink of in my spare time...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was going to be some typical blogspam type article, but I was wrong.

I really enjoyed this piece - highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER15> Fight Club is such a great motivational story for the first half or so. And then it goes completely off the rails.

I often credit my current position in life to watching Fight Club with a friend when I was 16 and forming my views on the broader world and how I would fit into it.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious - could you give an exmample of how it framed your thinking?

<comment><USER15> I guess the message I got from it sort of was that most of us live in boxes that we've built around ourselves that aren't actually there.

"Working jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need" was a big one for me.

Also "You're not your job. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your f-ing khakis."

"First you have to give up. You have to know, not fear, that someday you're going to die." and the Raymond K Hessel thing from the article. You only have a limited amount of time and there's no point wasting it waiting for "someday".

There's just a very real current of minimalism and intentionality underneath the absurdity.

<comment><USER12> Great points - I'm going to have to re-watch it. It sounds right up my alley, as I'm a bit too defiant and minimalistic. "You're a slave to the system, working jobs that you hate for that sh!t you don't need" \- Papa Roach

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You know, I was thinking about the US founding fathers, and how people back then accomplished so much when they were teenagers - teenagers! and it occurred to me:

1\. No smartphones

2\. No internet

3\. No social media

4\. The news came maybe once a week (correct me if I'm wrong)

5\. No TV or movies

6\. If you wanted to be entertained, you would have to physically go somewhere

7\. Otherwise, you would have to create your own entertainment yourself - <USER2> playing an instrument or writing something

<comment><USER17> you forgot the big one. Especially when you talk about founding fathers

8\. No government. Government restricts and funnel much of what we do now. Responsibilities ment freedom because there was no one to do it for you and no one to tell you not to.

We need distractions because if we didnt have them there would be nothing for us to do. America has created subsistence of mediocrity. No way to win or lose. You dont get to have a say in your society because its not yours.

Remember to vote because this is the only chance you get to effect your surroundings that the government allows without tons of red tape. And we know that it really doesnt matter that much. Where's the border wall? What democrat would really change wallstreet banking and think of the little people?

Government will be out of our way when we stop relying on politicians to act. I dont care what side you are on. Our politicians are thin veils to give the rich access to powers that the constitution would not normally grant.

<comment><USER16> I personally would attribute most of our current standard of living to better technology and better healthcare.

Besides, we live in an innovators paradise, where thanks to the cloud you can build whatever you want for peanuts and there are VC's lining up to fund the next big idea. Starting a business is not hard, it's staying in business that's the hard part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This guy makes several pretty clear references to needing his mom to do things like take him to Mexico and turn pages of books for him.

Does anyone think _she_ thought "hey why don't I accomplish big things" or "what do I need to sacrifice to get to where I want"? No? Was sitting in a library turning pages of books for someone part of her life ambition plan?

Accomplishing big things sometimes is getting a lot of help from your family and friends. They're not telling themselves Fight Club quotes as they're lending you money, talking you off the ledge or making you your favorite dinner every Sunday. They do it because it's the easiest thing in the world.

Maybe it's the most valuable too, even though no one, like, actually writes about it.

</comment><comment><USER19> This was pretty intense. I often think that the world could use more of this brand of intensity.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a deep respect for him overcoming what looks like unovercomable circumstances to achieve what he dreamed about.

Judging only the article however - what always lacks in my opinion in those kind of motivational articles is an approach to achieving minor, everyday goals. Not all of us have a desire to "threaten themselves with a gun" to achieve a goal - sometimes we just want to do something but nor think about it every second of our lives.

<comment><USER21> For that, I highly recommend the book "Atomic Habits". One of the major takeaways is that every time you do something, you're making a vote for the type of person you want to be in the future. And from that mindset, if gives a lot of advice about how to turn actions into habits.

<comment><USER22> The way I like to think about this is that every decision I make helps build the brain I'd like to have. After all, each decision stimulates a certain series of neural pathways. The more those pathways get used, the easier and more accessible they become.

I still fail, a lot, but I try to keep the phrase, "build the brain you wish you had" a lot. Which is really just synonymous with building habits, but there's something more physical about influencing your brain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Amazing story!

I had a student in one of my software engineering classes with a similar disability, a few years after I dropped out I found he developed a VR game and Playstation bought it!

Sometimes I wish I had the same willpower.

<comment><USER24> _" Most people think it's a tale of courage and persistence, a feel-good story of a young man and his mom who overcame the odds, and I suppose it is, but it's also a testament to the astonishing, almost limitless power of having a gun to your head."_

It's not about willpower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "I refused to hang out with other disabled or impoverished people."

Uh... wow. I've got my complaints about disabled people being used as Inspiration Porn, but throwing that in really makes it clear how much this piece is an insult to the disability community.

Grats to him for being in a situation where his disability didn't get in the way of what he's talented at, but not everyone is so lucky. And "avoid minorities" is... really shitty advice, no matter how you phrase it. Why not just focus on the groups he did join, instead?

</comment><comment><USER26> Inspiring story for sure. But even if you pull the trigger and make all of the needed sacrifices, you can still be a lifelong failure.

Hard work, an appetite for risk and resilience are required for success. But they are in no way a guarantee.

Instead of taking an all or nothing mindset, you can choose to invest in yourself over the long term. Financial investments, education. Maybe this won't be enough to achieve your goals, and you'll still live with regret. And maybe you'll die before you reap the benefits. Or maybe this will be enough for you.

Who knows. The only certainty is death. Doing something is better than nothing.

<comment><USER5> It's not about success. In fact it is never about success. It is about finding the process you love and if you die doing it, you will be still happy instead regretting. Pull the trigger to get yourself on the process and stick to it. Fast lifestyle of our generation has made it very difficult to figure out what does success really mean to us as individual.

<comment><USER27> Great peace of advice. Thank you</comment></comment></comment>