Best Notepad in your broswer - <AUTHOR>

Open your browser.
Enter "data:text/html, <html contenteditable>" for the url (wo the quotes).
Type in the page.
This is my everyday go-to noteskeeping. Enjoy <comment><USER2> kind of cool, but the data disappears with the tab.

<comment><USER3> You can add some js magic to save data to the URL and it will remain in the browser's history. Check a post I wrote about it: [http://dfernandez.me/articles/3%20-%20drawing%20bookmarklet/](http://dfernandez.me/articles/3%20-%20drawing%20bookmarklet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. we've seen this way too many times before.

2\. you can't even _spell_ "browser".

3\. there are lots of existing apps that will local-storage save the contents of your note.

-bowerbird

<comment><USER4> point #2 should have had a smiley attached to it.

-bowerbird</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you imagine using VR for things such as gaming? - <AUTHOR> Recently I've been seeing more and more about Virtual Reality in the press, and buzz on social media.
I can see applications in industry, such as controlling robots to do dangerous work etc. But can you see yourself using Virtual Reality sets for things such as gaming and entertainment - replacing current tech such as TV's and games consoles?
I imagine it could be quite cool, but I've heard a lot of arguments to the effect of 'you'd never know what else was going on in the room at the time'.
I ask hacker news because I think it would be an interesting debate, but I also think the demographic of the community is likely to be people who will be in the early uptakers of new tech... <comment><USER2> It'll be a little bit of time before we get the full immersive holodeck experience (we have the technology to approximate it, it's just damn expensive). Most VR will be sit-down with some controls for the time being. Not knowing what's going on around you is somewhat less important at that point. Of course we'd need to wire fire alarms and such into the system, but that's trivial. I could set that up in <1 hour with stuff I already have (motion sensor, fire alarm, wires & an arduino).

That all being said I can totally see it for some games. Flight/space Sims, anything first person really, it'll be great for social games, I can totally see something like second life (, except F2P,) popping up. MMOs might benifit, it'd need to be some action-oriented one though, not a click-and-wait setup like WoW.</comment>


James Damore's labor complaint against Google was completely shut down - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/16/17021714/james-damore-google-nlrb-complaint-diversity-discrimination <comment><USER2> Discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16396554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16396554)</comment>


Facebook Adds Option To Delete Your Account (Not Deactivate) - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2012/04/11/permanently-delete-facebook/

<comment><USER2> This has been the case for years now. It's not new. Is there something I'm perhaps missing?

On a side note, does anybody know if this is a 'true' delete and not just yet another 'set deleted=true where profileid=xyz'?

<comment><USER3> [https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=125338004213029#What- is-t...](https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=125338004213029#What-is-the- difference-between-deactivation-and-deletion)?

<comment><USER2> Ah yes. Messages are never deleted though..

\-----

Chat. This section showed some old chat conversations. All data was rather recent, which means that chat messages were deleted sooner or later. It is unclear if this section is still existing after facebook recently merged its chat and messaging function into one, but seems if all chat messages are now following the rules of normal messages.

Note: According to facebook's privacy policy messages will never be deleted.

Example: ... Author Max Mustermann (123456789) Recipients Petra Musterfrau (987654321) Sent 2011-06-06 19:05:56 UTC Body Hey, do you want to stay at my place tonight?

\---

<http://europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm tempted to notify all my friends, delete my account, recreate it under a pseudonym, and re-add my friends, while being much more careful this time around with what I share and my privacy settings.

<comment><USER2> No matter what you do, you cannot not accept messages from people you have befriended...and those are never deleted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has existed for quite some time... At least over a year.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think this is news.</comment>


YourWeek: a reddit-powered TV news program by PBS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reddit.com/2008/05/yourweek-reddit-powered-television-news.html

<comment><USER2> Oh no.

reddit has been slipping hard in quality, for me at least. Its front page will have you convinced that Iran is the best thing since sliced bread and everyone in power is out to kill you.

<comment><USER3> I honestly can't remember where I read/heard it, but to paraphrase: paranoia is only knowing a little bit of what's actually going on

<comment><USER4> And, of course, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm, PBS? How un-web-2.0.

A YouTube channel or jason.tv broadcast would seem more appropriate. But then again, why not just go to reddit, then?

<comment><USER6> The show will be broadcast online as well as on TV. The reason to watch the show is that you get the opinions of some well known journalists discussing the issues back and forth -- at least, that is the theory.

And I believe you mean justin.tv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a high ration of signal/noise on Reddit and PBS alike. This may very well succeed but, it might just be preaching to the choir.

I was about to comment that I was happy that the information on Reddiit was going to reach a larger audience but, I wish PBS would reach a larger audience.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this is freaking great.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like it purely for the novelty factor.

</comment><comment><USER10> RedditNation</comment>


A new key to understanding molecular evolution in space - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/3573.html <comment><USER2> Paper at [http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116...](http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.253201)</comment>


Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

<comment><USER2> As anyone who reads my comments regularly knows, this is by far my favorite link to share in a Hacker News comment. Yes,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

is good stuff, very helpful for evaluating hundreds of other submissions to Hacker News, and it's written by a LISP hacker (now director of research at Google), so what's not to like?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, can't remember but I might have browsed from one of your comments earlier. (lost in a sea of open browser tabs now) :)

 _Useful_ info (assuming one's utility function relates to acquiring more accurate beliefs), I had hoped other hackers might enjoy. Pity, as it seems to have missed the main page.

Many of us have probably made one or two similar arguments against "new paper _proves_ xyz" overstated claims. But a large collection of these red flags, with historical examples to boot, in one document, is simply fantastic.

Thanks for sharing</comment></comment>


Algorithm that summarizes text - <AUTHOR> http://genopharmix.com/TuataraSum/algorithms.html

<comment><USER2> NLP researcher here.

From a simple test, this tool is at the hobby level. The text is not interpreted semantically, because the so-called summarization is nothing but blocks of text from the original text, copied ad-literam. It lacks any kind of rewording. My guess is that for content retrieval it employs the the most rudimentary model one can think of [1], does a plain token indexation, then chooses the blocks with the highest density of non-ordinary words.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Boolean_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Boolean_model)

<comment><USER3> This is no hobby level system. I've done side-by-side comparisons and they've got something else going on here that beats other systems hands down. You've also seemed to miss the fact that these guys are enabling the context to be controlled using any word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried it on a couple of articles, and it failed miserably: [http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2005/03/31/a-search-engine-that- th...](http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2005/03/31/a-search-engine-that-thinks- almost/) [http://www.wired.com/2015/02/silicon-valley-home- schooling/](http://www.wired.com/2015/02/silicon-valley-home-schooling/)

</comment><comment><USER5> That was pretty terrible. No matter what I put in I got nothing but word salad.

</comment><comment><USER6> Cognitive Computing researcher here.

This system utilizes vector space and is based on a development at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:

[https://www.kaggle.com/c/word2vec-nlp- tutorial/forums/t/1234...](https://www.kaggle.com/c/word2vec-nlp- tutorial/forums/t/12349/word2vec-is-based-on-an-approach-from-lawrence- berkeley-national-lab)

[http://genopharmix.com/biomimetic- cognition/in_silico_cognit...](http://genopharmix.com/biomimetic- cognition/in_silico_cognitive_biomimicry.html)

It's designed to mimic the process of human cognition aka AI.

It's fairly sophisticated as shown by its results.

</comment><comment><USER3> [–]moridin007 1 point 1 day ago comparing this algorithm with the one i wrote for wingztv.com (shameless plug) i am really shocked by how much better these guys algo is. although mine was just kinda was hacked up. it just sees sentences with more words in common and ranks then by it, and then i just grab the top 5. this algo looks a lot more fancy O.o probably why it's a lot better lol. [http://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/2wqq5t/...](http://www.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/2wqq5t/autogenerated_article_summaries_for_mediumcom/)</comment>


How Americans pretend to love 'ethnic food' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/22/the-great-ethnic-food-lie/ <comment><USER2> OK, anecdote where n = 1, but this doesn't ring true to me. I personally pay approximately as much for the average Thai, Mexican, Indian, Cuban, etc. meal, when dining out, as I do for an average "American" meal. But then again, I rarely ever pay more than $30 or so for a meal (per person) unless I'm on a date, or I'm eating on someone else's dime (eg, when traveling for work and on an expense account that's charged back to the customer).

And the thing is, I'd happily pay more for good Thai food than I do now, but nobody charges more. Maybe there's some weird market imbalance thing going on, or maybe I'm really weird, but I think local Thai restaurants could charge more and still do well. But as it happens, all the Thai places nearby are in that range of about $11-$13 for an entree and $4-$10 for an appetizer. I'm _glad_ I can get such awesome food for not a ton of money, but I definitely feel like I'm getting a great deal.

For me personally, if there were a Thai place within walking distance of me that was high quality but was 50% more expensive (or maybe even more) compared to say, Thai Cafe on University Drive in Durham, I'd eat there and probably quite often.

I think I could say the same about a lot of the "ethnic" food I eat, although Thai is definitely my favorite. Heck, to be honest, when I say "ethnic food" I consider that a badge of honor or something, not a mark of inferiority.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another anecdote, n = 1, from Houston.

(Background: I live in a large port city with a whole lot of immigrants, primarily Latinos but also many Vietnamese, Indians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Lebanese, and lots of others--about a quarter of Houston's population is immigrants.)

This really seems incorrect to me. I don't think there's any sort of price ceiling on what people are willing to pay, as one can readily find Indian, Japanese, Thai, and Chinese places that all are rather expensive per plate. There are a lot of cheap places as well, to be sure, but in the same way I can find both cheap burgers at McDonald's and expensive gourmet burgers elsewhere.

There is an argument also to be made that the more traditional restaurants have a clientele made up of folks from their community, who probably aren't terribly wealthy (because recent immigrant), and so their prices tend to be a bit more reflective of what their normal clients can bear. It's not that they couldn't charge more--it's that the people more likely to be used to their cuisine are less likely to be able to pay high prices.

This is also why, for example, you can get better and cheaper BBQ out in Giddings than you can in Houston...the meat market doesn't have a lot of business from people who are living off of engineering and medical salaries, and they are closer to where a lot of the meat was raised. Oh, and it's been in business for like fifty years. That helps.

If anything, the "ethnic" divide is probably from what the grocery stores do: a couple of aisles are dedicated to ethnic/international foods, adding a few token items to the mainstay of the American dietary needs supplied there. The German/French/Italian stuff has been around for so long in the US that it isn't even really differentiated from normal English cuisine--and that's a shame, because you have to go out of your way to find good ingredients for those dishes.

Part of the problem too is that a lot of stuff like Chinese food is just pure garbage here. Panda Express and any number of low-rent places don't cook anything like real Chinese food (like, drive out to Chinatown and order from the traditional menu Chinese food) and yet they are what most Americans think of when they want to order Chinese. That brand association can hurt places that would otherwise be able to charge more for their food.

(And yes, it's a terrible thing to use the phrase "Chinese food" when there a different regions with different cuisines; I've done that here for brevity. Indian food is the same way, and so forth.)

There _is_ one part of the writeup I've seen first hand:

 _" Here in the United States, when you buy "ethnic food," you're essentially buying it from people who learn to cook it on the fly, mostly men, who have often never cooked back home."_

There's a taco truck nearby whose quality literally doubled as soon as the owners' wives and daughters started working. I've observed this at several other small Mexican places in Houston. The rule doesn't necessarily hold for larger or richer places, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make some good points, especially about the prices possibly being geared toward recent immigrant clientele. Since you focus on the bottom end of the market, I'll consider the reverse for the sake of argument:

Think of the highest end restaurants in your area, establishments where formal attire and reservations are a requirement. The types of places that win awards and accolades, where people that have the means will go to celebrate major life events.

In my experience, having lived in major cities on the East and West coasts, those restaurants are almost exclusivity western cuisine – specifically French or Italian derivatives. Japanese cuisine, as the article points out, tends to be the one exception to that rule. Thai, Mexican, Indian, Chinese, etc don't seem to be represented proportionally to their global popularity in the high- end market.

I googled around for "highest ranked restaurants in the United States" and the trend seems, in my opinion, pretty well aligned with this article's claims. And if you believe that the high-end market indicates what we value as a society, in that it's what we demonstrate we will pay for and praise handsomely, then there does seem to a eurocentric bias.

What I found though provoking in this article, and a sentiment I largely agree with from my own anecdotal experience, is the idea that there's a sort of prestige hierarchy for types of cuisine in the US.

<comment><USER3> I would be curious if the same holds true in other countries--if the highest- ranked restaurants in China serve native cuisine, if the highest-ranked restaurants in England serve English cuisine, and so forth.</comment></comment></comment>


Intellectual property theft, not metal, is the real trade war in US sights - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-10/intellectual-property-theft-not-steel-and-aluminum-is-the-real-/9531176 <comment><USER2> Considering that Intellectual Property is a _faaaar_ bigger industry than any other industry in the USA, it makes sense...</comment>


AMD attempts to exert editorial control over tech press - <AUTHOR> http://techreport.com/blog/23638/amd-attempts-to-shape-review-content-with-staged-release-of-info Today, AMD lifts the embargo on "limited previews" of its desktop Trinity processors. There are very specific rules about what can be discussed: specifications, power consumption, and gaming performance data are OK, but pricing, overclocking, and non-gaming performance data can't be published until a later date--after AMD's carefully orchestrated previews grab all the headlines.  This behavior could be considered unethical, and it certainly indicates that the previews out today don't tell the whole story. <comment><USER2> The first impression is the most important aspect of the product but this time AMD clearly used media illegally to take advantages in their product opening. This is a new form of media threatening that for customers should aware of.</comment>


Ask HN: Something like HN for Entrepreneurs? - <AUTHOR>

I've been on this site for almost 3 years and I love it for it's tech heavy focus. One of the things I'm looking for is something like HN but for entrepreneurs that gives tips on starting and running companies.  Something like an accelerators discussion board. <comment><USER2> Reddit entrepreneurship?</comment>


Mailbox's counter seems to be fake - <AUTHOR>

It's fake, isn't it? Because there is no network activity when it figures out how many people are in front. It seems to be purely based on time. i wonder if the head count numbers on two iphones can be in sync? or if adjusting system time can make the queue shorter? anyway, Isn't this marketing idea evil? <comment><USER2> damn, I think I'm being played too.</comment>


How we got 30$ on Android Market - <AUTHOR> http://demensdeum.com/blog/2015/12/22/%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BA-%D0%BC%D1%8B-%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8-mad-racer/ <comment><USER2> The game looks bad. The article gave me the impression that the author had high expectations, based on comments from testers. The reality is that every day, dozens of games get released that look more interesting than the author's game. This is not meant as a flame comment but merely as a reality check.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah graphics is bad I agree

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Making money from games is hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see lot of f2p games success stories</comment></comment>


Odesi: New music composition software to help you produce hot tracks - <AUTHOR> http://odesi.mixedinkey.com <comment><USER2> That looks awfully dumbed down :( I'm not sure who the audience is - it's too much for a beginner, and doesn't add anything someone who can write music would want.</comment>


Worlds within a self: V. S. Naipaul and modernity - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/v-s-naipauls-journeys-sanjay-krishnan-review-helen-hayward/ <comment><USER2> Title should read "V. S. Naipaul" (not vs. S.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._S._Naipaul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._S._Naipaul)

<comment><USER3> Whoa! Corner case. Will investigate.

Title fixed in the meantime. (It was 'Worlds within a self: vs. S. Naipaul and modernity'.)</comment></comment>


Evidence based software development - <AUTHOR>

Some time ago I read the slides from Greg Wilsons excellent presentation Bits of Evidence.
Today I found out that it's on YouTube (see comment).
I find it fascinating that the scientific studies of software development apparently seems to be mostly ignored or unknown to our community. <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.slideshare.net/gvwilson/bits-of-evidence-2338367> \- the slides from Bits of Evidence

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5UwJM2kGfo> \- Bits of Evidence: Code inspections

Unfortunately it's divided in chapters without any indexing so it can get a bit confusing since you most probably aren't going to be able to watch them in the order he presented them. Still worth it!</comment>


Price as Signal: The recording industry is lying about why they want different prices (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/18.html

<comment><USER2> The proper link:

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/18.html>

I remember this article well.

This hypothesis would explain why variable pricing has arrived on iTunes now: It was a _quid pro quo_ to convince the music industry to let Apple sell the 100% DRM-free music that it needs to sell in order to compete with up-and- comers like Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's accept the assumption that iTunes pricing doesn't obey the rule of lower price implying greater volume. For the theory to hold up, iTunes would have to represent a significant share of an artist's total revenues. Otherwise the artist wouldn't be bothered by a decrease in iTunes sales volumes.

But! As the importance of iTunes sales grows, an artist's incentive to keep a record label as distributor diminishes. Any artist can list themselves on iTunes - why would they share revenue with an evil record company if they don't need help with distribution and marketing?

</comment><comment><USER4> There is an extra slash on the end of the link.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is looking for remote job seekers? - <AUTHOR>

I am competent in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, C#, VB.Net, ASP.Net, Ruby on Rails. <comment><USER2> There's a monthly "who's hiring" thread, with some remote offers

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7324236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7324236)

Though many "remote" offers require you to be able to go to the U.S. on a semi-frequent basis, so are not available to many foreigners like myself.

If you're U.S. based, there are several nice opportunities :)

Most offers don't seem to be a match with your skillset though, .NET especially doesn't get any love in HN. The frontend and Ruby stuff will help you land a job hopefully :)</comment>


As Venezuela Collapses, Children Are Dying of Hunger - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/17/world/americas/venezuela-children-starving.html <comment><USER2> This made me so unbelievably sad. A country that was prosperous, educated, full of natural resources, gets destroyed by a corrupt and despicable political system. There is no reason this should happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> As Yemen Collapses, NYT Publishes Saudi Arabia Propaganda

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know why this is flagged, but I do see a lot of hot air about socialism in here without much pointing to evidence

</comment><comment><USER5> That was so disheartening. Folks really need to jump off that sinking ship - emigrate - or Maduro needs to be ousted.

<comment><USER6> Already happening, thousands of Venezuelans are migrating to Brazil. Some towns near the borders are already having trouble to manage accommodating so many families.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/hungry- ven...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/hungry-venezuelans- flood-brazilian-towns-as-threat-of-mass-migration- looms/2017/01/01/39f85822-c6d1-11e6-acda-59924caa2450_story.html?utm_term=.c828311f41f6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The Venezuelan government knows, but won't admit it."

The NY Times cheered for the socialist regime, but won't admit it.

<comment><USER4> Evidence?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used to think that economic collapse after the fall of Soviet communism was the worst outcome possible. Now it is apparent that crash with communism intact is much worse.

</comment><comment><USER9> Quoting someone else: "NY Times major piece on starvation in Venezuela.

Carefully avoids mentioning socialism. All the problems are passive voice ("as the economy collapsed," "as hyperinflation appeared") or exogenous ("oil prices collapsed").

Walter Duranty lives."

<comment><USER10> It was government corruption, not socialism that led to the current crisis.

Socialistic Scandinavia countries that have sovereign wealth funds from their oil extraction prosper.

<comment><USER11> Genuinely curious and not trying to troll: how successful would Scandinavian socialism be without oil?

<comment><USER12> Norway's is the only Scandinavia country with substantial amounts oil. Taxation is largely what is funding the welfare state.

<comment><USER13> That may be true, but all 3 countries are tiny with a large natural resource sector (so is Russia, incidentally, except on the "tiny" front). None depend on manufacturing or resources, despite all their European neighbors doing just that. Of course, sure, only 1 has a real oil sector. Like the middle eastern countries, though, Norway is somewhat guilty of sabotaging their own agricultural sector to appease political interests (ie. the greens), and compensating large amounts of importing from their immediate neighbors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Socialism ends this way every. Single. Time. "If only socialism was implemented correctly for a change!" The snowflakes chant. Ignoring history. Implementing more and more socialist programs at home. Sigh.

<comment><USER15> ah yes. we all know sweden and switzerland and norway are about to collapse and have people die of starvation on the streets.

<comment><USER16> Thanks to western democratic principles. You have conveniently ignored all their neighbors in the east block.

<comment><USER17> You've named the problem though I don't think you can see it yourself.

No matter where you are on a continuum of socialist and capitalist policies, a fascist dictator will always lead to abuses of power. Strong democratic principles do their best to mitigate and limit that, with varying degrees of success.

Venezuela did not have a strong democratic system. Military force was used to coerce elections, the democratic process to remove Maduro was initiated, completed successfully, and ignored entirely.

The lesson here is that this can happen to any country when our democratic systems are weakened. I'd argue that the United States has been on a glacial path to this for quite some time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The NYT crying crocodile tears over dying children is a bit hard to take.

Looks like the USA's determined to continue carrying out its coup after all:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt)

<comment><USER19> I don't read that rag anymore. Have they shed any tears for the children of Yemen?

<comment><USER20> Of course not. No one cares about Yemen because atrocities are being carried out by a US ally. It's plain to see when and where the media generates outrage.

<comment><USER21> NYT has covered the horrors in Yemen:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/world/middleeast/yemen- cr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/world/middleeast/yemen-crimes- against-humanity.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opinion/saudi-arabia- yeme...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opinion/saudi-arabia-yemen- famine.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/world/middleeast/yemen- sa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/world/middleeast/yemen-saudi- airstrike.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/yemen-war- unconst...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/opinion/yemen-war- unconstitutional.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Everything about Early Adopters - <AUTHOR> http://www.64notes.com/early-adopters-essay <comment><USER4> I applaud the aim of the article, and there is certainly an assorted collection of a few good tidbits about early adopters in there, but this article's tone is too perky, the content is too diluted by the voice the author used, and fundamentally there isn't that much solid advice. The site byline says it's "Young entrepreneur's jot", and indeed the article feels like it was written for a 10 year old.

I mean, wtf @

 _This is the main thing in whole article, I was just building the base till now. (Yah! This is gonna be an essay… kinda)._

The author should learn to be more concise. This should have been a clear, simple, straightforward, short article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted, will keep in mind next time I write.

<comment><USER4> One thing I try (and don't always succeed) in doing is to ask myself - <USER2> someone who is very busy is going to read this article, can they extract the value out of it quickly and efficiently?

There's two key things you could do to enable that:

1\. Use headings that summarise the text below; currently, your headings are introductions to the text below rather than summaries. Of course you can't get everything into a 5-word heading, but looking at the heading, the reader should not only know what type of content is coming, but also largely what the conclusion of it will be. A really good book on this topic is [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing- Thin...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyramid-Principle-Logic-Writing- Thinking/dp/0273710516/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291986844&sr=8-1)

2\. Summarise the key points at the end. A lot of people scroll through, glance at the headings, then look at the conclusion, before they decide whether to read the article. Summarising your points will, paradoxically, get more people to read the full article (or at least dive into the points of interest to them).

I believe that if you want people's attention, you need to show that you're respectful of their precious and limited time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great ideas! Will work with them next I sit to write. Thanks, early adopter :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One issue that seems to pop out:

If early adopters are different in some way than the majority of the population, how does this difference bear on the outcome of their input in shaping the product? I guess that means answering "What is the difference?" and "Is it meaningful?". Certainly companies in the past have faltered because they paid too much attention to their early adopters without recognizing that the needs being brought up were different from that of the overall user base. Fail to take that into account, and when the early adopters move on, you'll be left in the dust.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like clear my point with an example:Being geeky early adopter (different from normal crowd), I can tolerate a few bugs and see javascript errors and such. And even bear with bad UI. And with feedback, I help you prepare your stuff for 'main stream'. And when I leave. You are already in your transition period from early adopters to main-stream and you are ready for them.Problem is not that they 'listen' too much. Problem is that they just listen - <USER3> using their on brains. You got to compare feedback with your vision - not just do what they ask for.</comment></comment>


Liberating Data from NYC Property Tax Bills - <AUTHOR> http://chriswhong.com/open-data/liberating-data-from-nyc-property-tax-bills/ <comment><USER2> This is great work!

<comment><USER3> Major league sports get a $40m annual property tax abatement, churches get an annual combined half billion dollar property tax abatement. Taxes are wildly different from block to block, there are not dozens, but 147 different categories of abatements. There are 7 abatements that have a single claimant per annum (hmm...) and 42 abatements that have less than 10 claimants (more hmm?).

There's so much more, definitely worth a read. I imagine the info will cheese off some people.

Great work indeed!</comment></comment>


2500x: Convert Your Images to HTML tags - <AUTHOR> http://not-png.xyz/ <comment><USER2> > creating output images with file sizes up to 2500 times larger than the > originals.

This is the perfect format for storing all of my family photos! I never thought I'd find a good use for the 8TB of storage I impulse bought last black Friday.

</comment><comment><USER3> It crashed my browser /s

</comment><comment><USER4> this is great</comment>


Show HN: Discover Alexa: Alleviating the Voice Discovery Problem - <AUTHOR> https://discovery.voice-first.agency <comment><AUTHOR> One of the major issues users experiences, when they get an Alexa device, is, what to do. Also, when a user finds a skill, they don't know what to say to get the skill to start.

Something that has been staring us in the face is why don't we use voice to activate skills. The Alexa Deck is a randomised curated list of skills with a voice CTA.</comment>


Why things fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2012/10/ff-why-products-fail/all/

<comment><USER2> This just reminded me again how different software is from any physical world artifact... It's mind boggling how for lots of software the cost of failure can be reduced to almost ZERO by having the faulty component restart/reload/reboot or just pushing an automatic upgrade to millions of customers that didn't even knew they had a huge security hole...

And the ugly part is realizing how this "almost zero" cost of failure makes people behave:

1\. we release software with security whole upon security whole to customers (think Oracle, Ms, Apple... and probably everybody else too...), knowing the fix will only be one upgrade away anyway, or

2\. we just code ugly hacks that "just restart the goddam service" when it fails to respond or fails a sanity check, but leave the app otherwise running and just dump everything to a log that nobody will ever care about until performance really starts to degrade, or even then

3\. just throw more hardware at the problem and keep restarting stuff that leaks memory or starts to fail some empirical sanity checks

...on the other hand I wished the plane I flew in could just restart/reload/reboot after a failure before it smashed into the ground :) ...so maybe reducing the costs of failure and caring less about it is the way to go.

\-- EDIT: realized that the plane/software analogy leaks badly: if the plane I was in were the software, then I would be the data that get corrupted when it fails :|

<comment><USER3> In comparison to relatively simple mechanical devices it is also mindboggling in how many more ways software can fail.

\- failures from the underlying hardware \- out of memory may occur in many places \- handle each corner case that may be reachable correctly \- concurrency \- malicous user input \- running the program on future hardware

<comment><USER2> I don't thin "physical" devices have fewer points of failure than software... it's just that our intuition is used to lumping thinks together (like zillions of types of cracks are all "just cracks" unless you're a specialist in the field...), maybe we have less well formed intuitions about software failure.

...but do you really think an analog device doesn't have MUCH MORE ways in which it can fail than a piece of software? ...I mean, just think that software has a "limited" number of states it can be in ...whereas for a "lump of atoms" you need an overly simplified model just to start counting some sort of states for the smallest components

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> great article; thanks for posting.

vextec's site is here - <http://www.vextec.com/> \- and the patents for what i guess are the core technology are here - <http://www.vextec.com/our- technology/patents>

from reading the first article it seems that they extend finite element analysis down to the level of crystals (they say "microstructure based") (which is what you'd guess from the wired article). there's more detail related to particular models (crack nucleation and growth) that i don't completely get - i suppose those are different approximations used in the models (and where the hard science is). and then they seem to do monte-carlo on top of that.

</comment><comment><USER5> As I read this, the conspiracy theorist in me keeps thinking that Ford built Building 4 to optimize failure rates so they occur immediately after the warranty is up so they can cash in on service visits afterwards.

<comment><USER6> All modern corporations do this. It's called planned obsolescence and it is NOT a conspiracy theory. It's a well established standard operating practice for the majority of companies with manufactured, mass marketed goods.

Planned obsolescence occurs when barriers to entry are so high that the remaining players in the market, with a wink and a nod, form a subtle cartel. These cloak and dagger cartels of course raise prices, but they also increase failure rates to extract rent.

This is the dark side of capitalism and what happens when capital concentrates in the hands of a small plutocracy. The health of capitalism is completely dependent on decentralized wealth. As soon as wealth starts to concentrate, oligopolies and cartels form and they put a brake on innovation in favor of rent seeking.

There's a documentary on this called "The Lightbulb Conspiracy" which is worth watching.

<comment><USER7> The flip side of reliability is less innovation and less of other qualities such as fuel efficiency and so forth.

So, it's not a dark side, because corporations are economizing in accordance to a variety of factors.

<comment><USER6> > because corporations are economizing in accordance to a variety of factors.

Except, they're not. Planned obsolescence is not about economizing for other factors, it is about rent seeking. You seem to be dismissing the findings of this research without even understanding it. The entire point is that this research has demonstrated that the planned obsolescence in question is has to do with cartel formation and rent seeking rather than striving for a competitive edge in a competitive market. This rent seeking only happens in non-competitive, oligopolistic or monopolistic markets.

Cartel formation and operation is a well understood economic phenomenon. You seem to be doubting it based on some kind of faith in the free market, some kind of faith in the infallibility of markets. Adam Smith would have strong words against this kind of naive market-worship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those of you who are members of the IEEE, you might be interested in joining the Reliability Society. They publish journals in this area.

They also cover software reliability; particularly security and privacy.

<http://rs.ieee.org/></comment>


Comrades raise your pitchforks and take back the neighborhood - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/cultureshock/fa2006/www/essays/mcmansion.html

<comment><USER2> Welcome to the 1990s, here's your Discman.

Of all the things to get worked up about in one's community, the fact that some people have large, dull-looking houses is about the lamest, laziest, and least politically cognizant.

Or put another way, if the biggest problem in your community really and truly is that some people have McMansions...count your damn blessings.

And citing zoning variances? _Really?_

</comment><comment><USER3> So what? If they have the money and the land, go ahead and build what you like. That is what makes America free. This article is quite an example of class-ism.

<comment><USER4> Money is power and with power comes responsibility. Houses like this are wasteful and irresponsible on many, many levels.

It's true, focusing on this of all the problems facing us today is a little silly. And I don't think it is the government's place to discourage this. But it is our place to discourage it. This is something culture has to change. It should not be culturally acceptable to purchase McMansions. The owners of McMansions shouldn't have the respect, envy or admiration of their neighbors and peers. They should face scorn and derision. Eventually people will stop wanting them and stop buying them. And they will stop being built.

Instead, we should encourage those with the money to build and purchase homes that have been built as sustainably as possible. You shouldn't be trying to one up the Joneses with a home that is bigger, more wasteful and more ostentatious. You should be trying to one up the Joneses with a home that has a smaller environmental footprint, that makes better use of the land it sits on, that is more off the grid and more carbon neutral.

<comment><USER2> Or you should just build the house you actually want and then worry about more important things. Your car(s) will do much more ecological harm than your house.

Worse, spending effort on reducing the ecological impact of expensive homes to an absolute minimum is a game of diminishing returns. It wastes resources that would be better spent encouraging more modest levels of change at far broader levels that would lead to a much greater reduction of the _total_ human footprint.

This is why these objections are much less about the _natural_ environment and simply NIMBY reactions to a change to the _social_ environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we give developers some incentive not to do this? Is there some better configuration of homes that will give them more money (higher margins), or can we change the culture so that people won't buy these houses? Or maybe regulation is the only way to prevent this?

<comment><USER6> There really isn't anything we should do. It's not really a problem. The entire thing is a rant about how he doesn't like the style. He makes a couple vague references to build quality but that's beside the point of his main rant. Nothing good came come of legislating aesthetic values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It amazes me that people have a lot of $ but no class. If I had a few mil to drop on a house, I'd build or buy something special and cool, I wouldn't want to live in an expensive subdivision.

<comment><USER8> Cool and the local Homeowner association (HOA) generally don't go together, you would need to live outside a subdivision.

<comment><USER2> Taste is a funny thing. Someone who's had a McMansion built probably thinks that it's "cool", too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not your Comrade dude.</comment>


Tesla Model S Is Ranked Best Overall Car by Consumer Reports - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-02-25/tesla-model-s-is-ranked-best-overall-car-by-consumer-reports

<comment><USER2> It's kind of interesting to consider how the Tesla would have been reviewed by Consumer Reports were it an Apple product. Too expensive, incompatible with gasoline, short-ranged.

It would either get placed in its own category, or simply downgraded because it didn't have a gas tank.

<comment><USER3> I know you're being glib, but that isn't really accurate. Tesla is compatible with electricity and roads and the report is based solely on road tests, reliability and safety. Cost is not a consideration in this result.</comment></comment>


Ask HN- Does something similar to HN exist? - <AUTHOR>

Hacker News is my first site every day. I see HN as the best pool of popular stories on that day that scramble to keep their lead. I sometime go to see  comment though I find them going sideways (not staying on the topic started by the post) pretty easily. But, this (going sideways) is a human nature. One major thing about HN - It shows the same contents for every visitor.
I would love to see such a site for very much everything, including tech news (imho HN stories differ vastly to the ones on say, Techmeme), local news, business, shopping (a great opportunity for opinion-based shopping), travel etc. We don't want review sites, we want to say something on current state of affairs and let someone provide quality response (important feature of HN). Reddit is one, but childish most of time. Fark is another, but hilarious. I think of Quora, Stackexchange family but nothing matches simplicity and openness and global reach of HN. Many see answers in facebook and twitter but they are too close to be called as global for a single login (I have less than 50 friends on facebook).
Do you have any suggestions? <comment><USER2> I have to agree that the reason I prefer HN so often to other sites (particularly Reddit) is that often, I'm just not looking for humor. Not everything has to have a joke with it. Sometimes I just want to read, or have, a serious conversation. Quora, you mentioned, similarly a great place to read on a wide variety of things; it's like an inquisitive Wikipedia.

I know it's a popular opinion that HN long-ago-reached/is-reaching a threshold in popularity that threatens to ruin it... But before people say that, again, take a look at some of the other sites. Judging relatively? The bar with which to judge a community's seriousness of the topic is lower than you think.

I'd hesitate to call it a "4chanification" of the Internet; I actually still often enjoy 4chan. It's the spreading of the culture epitomized at 4chan shows making people chuckle is often easier than making them think. And easy comedy, while not inherently a bad thing, is obviously the most plentiful. The prevalence of comedy is also easily to notice on YouTube or Twitter. And it's not that I have anything against fun or being funny. I love David Cross, Richard Pryor, 3 Stooges, etc. I just sometimes enjoy having fun in ways that doesn't include humor. There's also fun outside laughter.

This is what makes me less eager to log into an old forum I used to love. Once a thread entitled "you laugh you lose" repeating things I'd long seen on 4chan became required reading to get any other joke in every other thread, it loses something. I don't have that community feeling I used to.

And say what you will about the quality of HN, even considering the fact that a good third of us dream of projects that would probably put another third out of business, by far and large people here are respectful and contributory rather than angry and wry. We may not be as tightly knit as many, especially given our numbers, but we're a community of quality decorum. Despite what much of the Internet seems to think, there's value in that.

A few months back I actually considered making a go at a gaming news site that would function like HN or Reddit. The idea being to drive high minded people and experts to have serious and civil discussions. It's not only a love of mine, there's a large number of game developers that blog, tweet, and in general communicate with fans. I figure if you can hook a few, you're good. Of course, I dropped that during a rough patch. Things are looking better now...

</comment><comment><USER3> It breaks my heart that what you're describing use to be Digg when they were at the top of their game.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was probably 2007. A lot of water has passed through Digg. Again, Digg was more-or-less link->comments story. On HN, "ask HN", "Show HN" are my fav reads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have a reddit account? The quality in some of the smaller subreddits is much higher. If you signup you can unsubscribe from pics, atheism, funny, awww and whatever other fluff defaults on the front page.

For an example of this higher quality content I'm mentioning check out: <http://www.reddit.com/r/photography>

<comment><USER5> I have an account set up on reddit that only subscribes to r/python, r/redditdev, r/django, r/startups etc. The quality on the front page of that account is pretty good, and there are very few gratuitous memes tolerated in these subreddits.

I highly recommend having separate accounts for entertainment and work/serious news.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a good suggestion.

<comment><USER2> Agreed; it's a great suggestion! In fact, I think it'd be great of Reddit to support this as a native feature, so I just made a post on /r/suggestions/!

<comment><USER5> Supporting it natively has been suggested before, but it's not something the admins are likely to implement in the near future. Try using the Reddit Enhancement Suite plug-in to easily switch between accounts (unless you are force into IE at work).

Also, note that r/ideasfortheadmins is the better place to post ideas like this (and the admins do read it and respond to it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Put a contact email in your profile and I'll give you pre-alpha access to my experiment. I would value an additional opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> please send me access - nitin.nanivadekar at gmail

<comment><USER6> Sure. I'm on the road for the next couple of days, but I'll ping you when I'm back. Thanks for your interest.</comment></comment></comment>


G.E., the 124-Year-Old Software Start-Up - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/2016/08/28/technology/ge-the-124-year-old-software-start-up.html?referer= <comment><USER2> I spent 10 years working at GE before I left for SF and the startup world. I was a software engineer at a time when GE was shipping software engineering jobs to India to cut costs. The GE vision for software engineering was that of an assembly line, staffed by large quantities of low wage employees.

GE outsourced the majority of its technical jobs to offshore firms. I remember hearing a statistic that for every 1 GE employee in the technology department there were 4 offshore consultants. The role of GE employees in the technology department shifted from a technical skill-set to a managerial skill-set. Many of my co-workers had degrees in finance and marketing, and had never written a line of code in their life. The lack of technical expertise within the organization created what I would call a culture of fear, where people feared the software they managed because they didn't understand it.

The official term for offshore software engineers was GDC. I have no clue what the acronym stood for, but over time it certainly become a derogatory term. I remember being mocked by my co-workers for writing code and being nicknamed a GDC (as in, why would you do the work we pay people pennies to do). It was almost like a caste system within the company, where these GDC employees were low paid and looked down upon by many.

The offshore model certainly was ineffective and the result of employee discontent, however, the practice was continued and mandated at the executive level. Then the economy crashed. GE decided it was finally time to bring jobs back to the US and hire software engineers. Why? Because they were able to take hundreds of millions in federal tax subsidies from US tax payers. (As an aside, someone mentioned GE moving its HQ to Boston to be closer to engineering talent. Taxes are still the main driver here)

GE soon began hiring US software engineers at a number of designated centers where they were segregated from the rest of the company. The interesting thing is that culturally these employees were largely treated like their GDC predecessors. The perception of software engineers being low-wage assembly line employees was, in my opinion, just too engrained into the company culture.

So when GE describes this transformation to a software company, I believe the most important aspect of this transformation will be changing the company culture and employee attitudes toward software engineers. They will need to undo a decade long effort to turn engineering into an assembly line.

<comment><USER3> _" GE soon began hiring US software engineers at a number of designated centers where they were segregated from the rest of the company."_

That still seems to be the plan: "The San Ramon complex, home to GE Digital, now employs 1,400 people. The buildings are designed to suit the free-range working ways of software developers: open-plan floors, bench seating, whiteboards, couches for impromptu meetings, balconies overlooking the grounds and kitchen areas with snacks." There are pictures on the GE Digital site. What you don't see are workbenches with electrical products hooked up to computers. They're not doing embedded software.

This has an impact on product design. The GE Digital site says: "One million terabytes per day … that's how much data Predix will process by 2020." They're thinking "big data", where all this stuff is shipped to the "cloud" for later analysis. The alternative would be digesting it near the source and only sending in the interesting stuff. They're going to collect gigabytes of "Bearing 22 temp 18 C", which is only important if the value is out of normal range or shows a trend.

The alternative would be some smartphone-sized device which listens to the data from your turbine or jet engine and finds the good stuff. But that wouldn't justify expensive cloud services, fees, meetings, etc. Even if it did exactly the same thing, GE couldn't collect huge fees for a smartphone-sized analysis device.

<comment><USER4> Right, but how do you see the trend in context without storing all the data centrally?

I could see something like this powering Bret Victor's "seeing space" idea, which could be quite cool. ([http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/](http://worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Throwaway, as I work for a company that competes with GE in this space.

This is GE's business model. When they want to enter a space, they throw money ($B) at it until they have a business. They tend to prefer organic builout, but they will buy companies or partner if they think they can't win organically. If you're willing to do that, you almost always get some traction, just because you have unimaginable resources and are willing to adjust your tactics if the initial gambit fails. They tend to do a lot of advertising for key businesses - this is why you see GE Aviation billboards in airports, and GE Oil & Gas ads in Houston.

The model has worked pretty well in the past - a good example is GE's entry into commercial jet engines in the early 70s. A good example where it failed was GE's computer business in the 60s.

I can't prove it (just a feeling), but I think Predix doesn't really have what it takes yet. We've spent a lot of time studying it, and it doesn't seem to offer real value to customers yet. That doesn't mean it won't get there eventually.

However, if Predix doesn't do well, we expect them to go on an acquisition spree to buy a few of the winners. Bently Nevada is a good example of that play - GE controls something like 70% of the machinery protection market. They didn't build it, they just went and bought Bently.

GE is clearly signaling that they badly want to be in this market, and I think it's pretty likely they'll eventually get there.

<comment><USER6> I'm also on a throw-away. I work for the Predix team and its a giant cluster fuck.

I think one month we had a 90% uptime. Our services crash all the time.

Our new boss has said he has around a 500-600 million budget for buying interesting companies.

<comment><USER7> Worked on a software project built on top of Predix. It was like building software on quicksand how often predix and cloudfoundry would fail.

<comment><USER8> What was the failure mode for Cloud Foundry? Going down completely, rejecting commands, etc?

<comment><USER7> It was my experience it was just "Bye Felicia"

BUT it might have been how our app was coded we weren't taking advantage of some sort of built in failure hooks or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Predix is built on top of Cloud Foundry. GE are a Foundation member and one of the major investors in Pivotal, which in turn is the majority donor of engineering on Cloud Foundry. By way of disclosure, I work for Pivotal. None of this should be seen as official comment.

So the key thing is: from where I'm sitting, GE are actually serious about this. Really serious. They are not alone.

There's this cliché that big companies are all sitting around, waiting to be disrupted, blissfully unaware that someone in the Valley is going to kill them.

It's getting to be a less and less plausible strawman. Those business leaders are reading the same books, hearing the same ideas and -- crucially -- many of them are consciously seeking out people who can teach them (including, I guess this is a disclosure, Pivotal Labs, our consulting/coaching wing).

Enterprises now _want_ to disrupt themselves, because it 1) hurts their existing competitors and 2) creates moats against startups.

The strawman that giant enterprises are ignorant and ripe for disruption because of their arrogance -- the classical model of hubris -- isn't true.

Hubris cuts both ways. It's the Valley that's becoming lazy and complacent, assuming that they have a monopoly on interesting problems, on big revenues, on agile and lean development.

The barbarians used to be at the gates of Rome. Now the Romans are at the gates of the barbarians, and they're _much_ more heavily armed.

<comment><USER10> > _The strawman that giant enterprises are ignorant and ripe for disruption > because of their arrogance -- the classical model of hubris -- isn 't true._

I'll buy that.

I still think they are ripe for disruption because they are giant enterprises.

I can't think of any examples of big bureaucratic organizations with a settled culture transforming into something different and better. Normally they get replaced.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this -- don't think that just because a big company throws words and money around that they are going to change. There can be many in middle management who either don't want change;or are too set in their ways and unwilling to learn what it takes to change ;or are simply too incompetent to change. Look at Yahoo.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you, actually. I've seen before that upper management can be shown the advantages quickly, and folks at the coal face can be shown the advantages quickly.

People in the middle, whose reckoning includes career prospects and health insurance and worrying about mortgages and where their kids will go to school, tend to lean towards the "never take a risk ever" school of thought.

And a lot of corporate cultures are built on punishment and reward, distributed veto powers and a fondness for finding a neck whenever something goes wrong.

But, again, they are not all the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Travelled to China from Ireland to work with a Chinese software company. Dragged in to work for GE, ended up across a lot of their divisions from 2005 for a few years. Worked out of Atlanta for some time

They did not have a software culture at the time, everything was outsourced. Project managers did not have any clue of how to manage a software project professionally, they struck me as more financial / admin types. India and China were like wolves and GE threw projects to them expecting the lowest cost to emerge as the winner.

Office was always dead on Friday, there was a culture to often work from home but not actually work.

From my understanding at the time they used to cut 10% of the worst performing staff every year, I believe they were one of the worlds largest employers at the time. My biggest peeve was their culture of having meetings just to have meetings....I think this issue can be found in most large enterprises.

My cousin now works for GE in Australia and says 'they are trying to become a startup'. I'm not convinced, it's pretty cool to be called a startup but true startups will only thrive in GE if they are left alone by management and allowed to utilise large resources. It can work, small teams can make great inroads for these types of organisations.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Tech giants, including Amazon, Cisco, Google, IBM and Microsoft also have > their eye on the industrial internet market, as do a bevy of start-ups.

This explains a lot of recent interest in IoT. Big companies like GE saw what happened to companies like Kodak and want to defend their profits. They could be entirely wrong, computing may not turn out add much value in these industries. But GE probably don't want to leave that to chance.

<comment><USER14> Industrial is a pretty staid, slow moving market. I'm out of it as soon as the movers get here. It's fantastic, thrilling work but you can't get the people in power to grok what you're doing.

It's sad and hard to do, but I've told a colleague who's trying to go into this market ( we were both laid off this year ) "no", because the overall culture isn't ready for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The fact that they air commercials to try to hire developers continually amazes me. I don't think I've seen that before.

<comment><USER16> i find those commercials really weird. "Digital and Industrial" i think speaks more to EEs (of which they have plenty) than to software developers, ML experts, and/or data scientists.

<comment><USER14> to my ear, D&I refers more to PLC guys, who are probably closer to being industrial engineers than either EEs or software guys. I've talked to PLC vendors before; they aren't familiar with what it would take to actually do ... more ambitious industrial control. Basic stuff like filters and modest machine learning is a bit beyond what they offer. It's ladder logic and cabling.

PLC inventories are measured in decades, not years.

It's honorable work, but it's not to be confused with software development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Today one of San Ramon's most important projects is to build a computer > operating system, but on an industrial scale ... The project is central to > G.E.'s drive to become what Mr. Immelt says will be a "top 10 software > company" by 2020.

Does anyone know of such a list that's a genuine reflection of reality?

<comment><USER18> The "top" idea is really murky because there's so many ways to define leading. I'll make a large bet that GE Digital will not be top at the following for developers due to so much inertia in IT and software in the company being cost-centric rather than innovation-centric:

\- Pay / comp \- Perks \- Perceived difficult technical problems

They may win on number employeed (they just announced a big software development office in India) or perhaps when comparing these figures to competitors like Honeywell, Caterpillar, Phillips rather than the big, high value brand software companies.

This isn't to say that this means failure. Perhaps they can win on cultural perception (say, work-life balance) or career growth and capitalize upon a backlash against Silicon Valley engineer lifestyles. But everything I've seen about Predix from a customer and engineer perspective, which is what they're betting an awful lot on, is hardly compelling to me.

<comment><USER19> This reminds me of my company. The IT department is also calling itself "Digital" now and they are pushing themselves more and more into all company divisions. But they are managed by people who don't have passion for or understanding of technology. Sometimes it feels like the leadership is afraid of technology.

They just know that "Digital" and "Big Data" are big now and they have to get into it. It reminds me of the internet bubble times when lots of companies did "internet" without knowing what it really means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are a lot of positive things about GE but let's not call it a startup. It's just not wired that way.

</comment><comment><USER21> Didn't GE used to do stack ranking review and fire the bottom 10% annually?

<comment><USER22> Yes, but you had a few chances to get out of the bottom.

You had to be a "C-player" for something like three consecutive review periods before you were let go.

(source: my father was a manager at GE for decades)

<comment><USER23> Do they still use stack ranking?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You know you're in a bubble when a company manufacturing jet engines and locomotives tries to rebrand itself as a big data web startup.

<comment><USER25> Or when a company that's just a website is worth more than chains of actual, physical hotels.

<comment><USER26> Actually most hotel chains do not own the hotel real estate, they are management companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > "We had to be more capable in software," Mr. Immelt said he decided.

I hate to be snarky, but I suspect this is not how GE Digital actually came about.

<comment><USER28> Actually I hate to be snarky but big CEO's like Immelt that is kind of they way they operate. By gathering and processing big thoughts and issuing directives. It's probably one of a thousand things that he said to people, the other 999 the troops found out and told him didn't have any merit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _" Matt Krause, the plant manager, said that last winter, when a snowstorm shut the factory for a day, the sensor network detected that the plant had consumed 1,000 pounds of argon, an inert gas used in coatings for parts. The leak was fixed, saving $350,000 a year."_

By my (suspect) arithmetic, that is about 200 cubic metres of Argon at STP in one day. Do they have the stuff on mains around the factory?

<comment><USER30> Not a materials scientist but argon-oxygen is a common first step in plasma cleaning surfaces (critical especially for allowing whatever you want to CVD to adhere properly to certain metals) before applying primer. (It's also used in nitride hardening aluminium.)

Considering how large GE is, I wouldn't be surprised if they had it 'on tap' in a PLT automation network and they take bulk delivery from a supplier every month or two. and some bad process engineer forgot to add a sensor check in loop (or his manager just told him to "screw it, argons cheap, no need to add a flow meter to this process" as a cost cutting factor).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I worked on one of the projects that C3 was involved in as a GE employee and agree completely with Seibel's assessment.

Some things I observed:

#1 I watched a top software development company that was doing a great job get fired because they told GE that a desired deadline was impossible. One of the reasons the non-technical manager who fired them gave for the termination was that he didn't feel like they wrote enough lines of code.

#2 A very corporate culture. Developers could not wear jeans in the office. You needed come to work in business casual or dressier attire. And this was one of the innovation centers.

#3 A "corporate" rollout of TDD where a bunch of enterprise developers who hated TDD were given TDD training and then had no requirement to use it for 6 months....plus none of the other practices that go with it. In the end most devs never adopted the practice. (I am a TDD advocate and trust me I tired to get them to use a different approach but it was like talking to a wall)

#4 Crazy bureaucracy to get anything done. Servers need to be in a private double secure cloud (for non production non sensitive components) and developers worked for over a year with out any actual servers to run code on, and were not allowed to stand up servers under you desk as a stop gap due to corporate security. It would even take weeks to even get basics like office supplies that had to go through a special workflow.

#5 During this period of no servers, I was in charge of getting the CI infrastructure set up. One time I had a six sigma black belt ask me the status of the project. When I told him it was on hold due to lack of infrastructure he said "Lack of servers is no reason for not being able to roll out CI in our organization"

#6 Lots of training for things not needed for your job. Six Sigma (the only useful thing was lean which could have been taught in a quarter of the time). There was a good 20-40 hours of mandatory training per year (at least) for things relating to corporate compliance, safety etc., but not things relating to your job.

#7 For one project the use of Javascript was prohibited in favor of using a server side technology that generates it because the enterprise architect thought it would not be realistic to expect Java developers to learn or be able to also know Javascript.

#8 It was like pulling teeth to get time off to attend a conference even if you paid for it with your own money.

#9 Lots of C-player engineers were promoted because they could play the politics while the good ones who actually could get things done/code left.

All of this was over a 2 year period just a few years ago, after Immelt declared they were a software company at one of their newly established "Innovation/Centers of Excellence". Needless to say I have moved on to more interesting work.

Though this is a little better than what was described during their outsourcing binge I just don't see GE ever really being able to take on software effectively. Their corporate culture is just not set up for it. They would be much better either having completely separate divisions that they own a stake in but do not manage in any way/shape/form or partnering with companies that do software well.

I would love to be wrong, but my guess is that a few decent engineers will join based on the slick ads, and maybe a updated office, things will fall apart and they will move on.

<comment><USER23> > he didn't feel like they wrote enough lines of code.

Say what you want about Steve Balmer but he had the right attitude towards that [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHI7RTKhlz0&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHI7RTKhlz0&feature=youtu.be)

As to the rest, I get the feeling that a lot of players in the market that now need software have the exact same tales being told about them. It is going to be a wonderment to me if I will be about to get through a day in 10 years without a IoT failure.

<comment><USER31> Given what I saw I'm amazed that any of their software actually works. Perhaps Predix will buck that trend, but I still posit that this would be the exception not the rule for them. What I can say is that I worked for a number of other large companies and the only other company that came close to having this level of inefficiency was a defense contractor. While some of these other large corporations had a some WTF moments for me GE had a much larger number, but it is a large organization so other's experiences may be different etc..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> GE had a commercial blitz during the recent Olympics touting that they are a digital company:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDbfudoXjBM&list=PLxRhTjvLly...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDbfudoXjBM&list=PLxRhTjvLlyoIXJLwUxoQFx7Erz_FUPkJ9)

</comment><comment><USER33> > Tech giants, including Amazon, Cisco, Google, IBM and Microsoft also have > their eye on the industrial internet market, as do a bevy of start-ups.

The article doesn't mention any startups. Any ideas what startups could be potential disruptors?

</comment><comment><USER34> > The San Ramon complex, home to GE Digital, now employs 1,400 people. The > buildings are designed to suit the free-range working ways of software > developers: open-plan floors, bench seating, whiteboards, couches for > impromptu meetings, balconies overlooking the grounds and kitchen areas with > snacks.

It's official now, we're just chickens to the world.

So the meme finally sticks and now we're screwed for the next decade? Who do we blame for the idea that "impromptu meetings" and those baloney is the way of working for programmers?

<comment><USER9> I'd be interested whether they've adopted pair programming or not.

I've worked open plan solo and paired.

Solo: I have ADHD. It's a _nightmare_.

Paired: I have ADHD. I barely notice the background.

<comment><USER35> I wonder how strongly pair programming is correlated with open office plans. Depressing if true, but if pair programming offsets the distraction of open plans, there may be cases where it's more viable for a company to simply hire twice as many developers and save money on office space, just to get out of having to give people offices.

On the other hand, it seems like people doing pair programming in open plans would contribute to the overall noise and distraction- a warehouse full of pairs of people talking all the time would also be a bad scene. :(

<comment><USER36> Office space isn't that expensive.

While cost IS a factor, the idea seems to be going round that open plan is genuinely superior. (Although rarely so superior that the executives partake...)

<comment><USER25> Right, startup companies do open-plan because it is cheap, not because any actual developers are more productive or happier that way. It's supposed to be something you put up with until the company can afford offices... Only that point got lost somewhere along the way.

Hell why doesn't GE just remodel their offices to look like garages, because _obviously_ that's the reason that Apple was successful...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> They should hire as CEO someone who helped build a software startup into a large company to show the appropriate leadership. Otherwise there will be too much corporate inertia and the old way of doing things.

Like Google, they should open up a large tech office in NYC, where many top level software people want to live.

<comment><USER38> They are moving their corporate HQ to Boston where many top level software people DO live.

<comment><USER37> I lived in Boston (Inman Sq, Cambridge, later Back Bay, Boston) for 5 years after my undergraduate education. NYC is far, far more interesting and exciting than Boston. As an indirect indicator, NYC draws far more VC than Boston.

<comment><USER39> Depending on the data that you look at, NYC and Boston are pretty close. [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/global...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/global- startup-cities-venture-capital/429255/)

More importantly, Boston is much heavier into manufacturing technology, hardware, B2B software, etc whereas NYC is more focused on consumer, retail, fashion, etc. Boston is pretty clearly a better choice for GE.

In reality GE's HQ in Boston will represent a tiny fraction of their global employees, though, so it doesn't really matter. [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/11/huge-but- its...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/03/11/huge-but-its-future- headquarters-will-anything-but/INqV8GezulQDnQI1tKBxFJ/story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's hard for me to think of General Electric without also thinking of Jack Welch and those massive, massive layoffs.

<comment><USER41> Plus the legacy of purposeful pollution, stuff like stack ranking and other scumbaggery.

They were a customer of mine, they used to incorporate pencils into leases of capital equipment to reduce tax exposure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> PR piece, bleh.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you define the boundaries of your microservices? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I work as a contractor designing microservice arches on AWS. When I talk with my clients' developers about splitting their app into microservices, I ask them to use this abridged Unix Philosphy to draw borders:

1\. Make each service do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

2\. Expect the output of every service to become the input to another. Don't clutter output with extraneous information.

3\. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to complicated systems. The more universal you APIs, the easier to add new services later.

You can also compare this to functional programming: imagine each microservice is a stateless function for manipulating you data and outputting the result.</comment>


Events related social network - <AUTHOR> http://tymr.com I trully believe that an event-oriented social network is the best use of this called social web  I can think of. <comment><AUTHOR> I truly believe that an event oriented social network is the best use of the social web I can think of.</comment>


Covid-19 AI Literature review front end development - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I am leading a group of clinicians and scientists in creating a literature review that is updated in real-time, to answer critical medical and scientific questions.https://www.kaggle.com/covid-19-contributions
Kaggle has been a great home for the start of the project, and the community has provided us the tools we needed to come as far as we have.
It has been a lot of fun having our medical team interact with the tech community to create this project.
We are looking to move this lit-review off of Kaggle (where we are manually updating an excel sheet to push to the site)and onto another site (GitHub, a new domain, etc?). We are looking for some front end developers to help us make the page more easily updatable as well as user friendly and navigatable for clinicians and scientists.
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!
Please let me know if you have any questions <comment><USER2> Groups of humans are already doing literature reviews, eg. [https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/covid19roundup/issues/](https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/covid19roundup/issues/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal is to switch from humans doing it to AI doing it. The number of papers is doubling every 2 weeks and having humans do it is unsustainable</comment></comment>


5 Year Old Girl works with Dad to create video game - <AUTHOR> http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2011/05/24/sissys-magical-ponycorn-adventure/

<comment><USER2> Hahahaha. It's a masterpiece! Very funny.</comment>


BBM for Android and BBM for iPhone: Official Launch Details - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.blackberry.com/2013/10/bbm-android-iphone-launch/?CPID=SOC_C_NA_Other1382366770 <comment><USER2> As a former Blackberry user, I feel sad watching their slow decline into irrelevance.

I really enjoyed the Blackberry Pearl back in the day, and the 9900 had the best keyboard on a mobile device that I've ever used.

It's sad to see them desperately struggle for survivial.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't look like it's live in the Play Store yet: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bbm](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bbm)</comment>


Ten Rules for Web Startups - <AUTHOR> http://evhead.com/2005/11/ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp <comment><USER2> I hate lists like these and here's why:

#3 contradicts #1

#5 and #6 contradict

#7 and #8 often come into conflict

#4 and #9 are in conflict

lists lead to check mark the box attitude, which is pretty much the opposite of the flexibility that allows new companies to steal users from entrenched players. running a business is a creative endeavor. asking yourself if you did XYZ today is counter productive.

<comment><USER3> Even without an explicit contradiction, the terms and metrics are so vague that they could really mean anything, according to your interpretation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the first point here: be narrow is such an overlooked and important idea. Facebook didn't have more than one photo for over 18 months and is now the largest photo sharing site by FAR.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but it annoys me to read that kind of "overlooked" ideas over and over again and never see the issues discussed by the author.

If Evan Williams tells me to be narrow, maybe he could also tell me how not to be just a tiny feature of some powerful entity's app, waiting to be replaced as soon as my app gets traction.

<comment><USER6> _If Evan Williams tells me to be narrow, maybe he could also tell me how not to be just a tiny feature of some powerful entity's app, waiting to be replaced as soon as my app gets traction._

I sell a strict subset of Microsoft Excel. My strategy for competing with Microsoft Excel is two-fold: first, I'm not Microsoft and second, I don't sell Excel.

Plus, if you'll forgive me one of my hobbyhorses: there is a titanic gulf between your application's feature set and your business. I think as engineers we look at the feature set and see 90% of the value, and naturally assume that something with 100 times the features is 100 times better. I think the truth is that the application itself is closer to 10% of the value, and that huge ginormous feature sets have costs as well as benefits.

One quick example: if you have a very focused vision of your product or users, you can afford to play depth-versus-breadth on marketing to your niche.

<comment><USER7> Every product will always have a set of intrinsic features; things like usability, aesthetic appeal, performance, efficiency, robustness, etc. When you use a brain-dead functionality checklist approach to development you are almost assured to fail at delivering on the intrinsic featureset, which is often the most important.

In mature industries most of the competition is on these intrinsic aspects, just look at automobiles, furniture, or food.

When Apple initially revealed the first iPod in 2001 there was a considerable amount of initial criticism from the tech savvy community and many people thought it would flop. The critics called it just another MP3 player and pointed out where it lacked seemingly important features that the competition already had. And yet the iPod became one of the most phenomenally successful products of all time, and has played a major role in revolutionizing the way that music is produced, distributed, and listened to. All because Apple is smart enough to know how critical it is to deliver on the intrinsic featureset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [2005]

<comment><USER9> Pre-Twitter. In some ways that makes it better in my mind.

<comment><USER10> Yes. There's more opportunity for irony now:

 _"While it's true that traffic is now again actually worth something, the give-everything-away-and-make-it-up-on-volume strategy stamps an expiration date on your company's ass....design something to charge for into your product and start taking money within 6 months (and do it with PayPal)."_

also fun:

 _"Acquisitions are much easier if they're small. And small acquisitions are possible if valuations are kept low from the get go."_

Ahem....what's Twitter up to now? $1 billion? Hope they get that paypal feature launched soon...

<comment><USER11> I dont "get" Twitter. Not in any way that I'd put money on, at least. Selling people a product is much more predictable than playing the attention economy game, let alone creating a social network. While he is riding the Twitter growth for now, it is not apparent to me that it is something he should bank on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> so why didn't twitter start charging 6 months in? and it doesn't look like he followed his own advice on staying small

<comment><USER13> Odeo had enough cash flow to work on their second idea: Twitter.

According to Cruchbase, Twitter has 83 employees. That is pretty tiny with respect to the number users that they have. <http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter>

<comment><USER14> 83 is masses with respect to what they do. I wonder how many of those employees are 'PR/marketing/bizdev' etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting to read, although the suggestion that you try a turnkey service is potentially bad advice. Most turnkey services ("we'll be your IT team for you!") suck. They don't care about doing a good job. They care about minimizing effort to maximize their profit. The SLA that you thought would protect you -- that turns out to only refund the money you paid the service for the time you were down. (Most SLAs don't promise to recoup your lost _profits_.)

<comment><USER16> It definitely depends on the types of services you are using. Services like UserVoice/GetSatisfaction, Gmail, Posterous/WordPress blog, etc are a better use of resources than hosting or rolling your own if its not core to your business.</comment></comment>