When There's an Audience, People's Performance Improves - <AUTHOR> https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/when_theres_an_audience_peoples_performance_improves <comment><USER2> The research on this is not new, and it's not as simple as this. If you give people a task that's well-rehearsed for them, that they're good at, they'll tend to do better. But if you give them something less well-rehearsed, something that's "hard," they do worse. I wish I had my psychology textbooks on hand for the references, but a lot of this stuff isn't obvious until after- the-fact.

<comment><USER3> Is it that simple? It certainly does not fit my experience. I type code for a living and have for 30 years so I'm clearly well rehearsed but I can't type well when being looked at.

<comment><USER4> This is psychology, there are always exceptions. Personally I don't have problems with the act of typing when being looked at, but I do have a tendency to get nervous to the point I'm having trouble speaking. Only happens with crowds I'm not familiar with though. But I know enough of sociolog/psychology to realize that doesn't mean any of the claims made here are false for the general public, or even for me in certain situations. I do have the impressions I'm sometimes better in sports when people are watching and/or cheering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting results, though I do wonder if this may be one of those situations where the results depend significantly on the individual and their personality.

Don't like to use anecdotes, but still... I'm definitely someone who has a breakdown whenever having to do something with the possibility of an audience, let alone a live one. Fine doing something off camera, completely screw up whenever a capture card or camers is anyway in the vicinity (and hence end up having to throw out tons of failed recordings).

<comment><USER6> There's actually a gene associated with this very thing.

<comment><USER6> How in the world did this get downvoted?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't fully agree with the article. As someone who has gamed in front of many audiences before, it can absolutely make you screw up. Specifically when it mentions performing well in front of an audience acting as sort of a mental stimulant for reward. I think it also depends heavily on where the audience is. If I'm in say a room with just my team and sound proof headphones, you are way more focused and play more like you normally would. If someone is standing over your shoulder, you start to do things you wouldn't normally do, whether it be to speed up the match to not bore the observer, to try an hit a cool shot, etc. The nature of the action being done has to be one of the most influential factors. In a gaming environment where no two matches are ever the same, you can't go off of rehearsed actions because they won't work in all scenarios. Therefor, when in new situations where you're trying to adapt on the fly, that's when you start trying to get fancy for the audience and ultimately make sloppy mistakes. However, if it were something that you can use rehearsed actions on, like coding, then the pressure might not be as intense as to make you mess up.

<comment><USER8> > In a gaming environment where no two matches are ever the same, you can't go > off of rehearsed actions because they won't work in all scenarios.

Even with routine muscle-memory tasks like combos in fighting games, "tournament nerves" are blamed for errors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder, could this apply to open source? Do we build better code if it's open source because it has more of an audience?

<comment><USER10> I saw it happen to me. At work I wrote some libraries, which would be seen by just a couple of coworkers, and I thought I worked hard on them. Years later I wrote a small JavaScript function to put on Github, and I just couldn't leave it alone, cleaning it up, tweaking it here and there, knowing that smart people from all around the world might see it and judge me by it.

<comment><USER11> Half of my personal projects are set as private because I am afraid the code is not worthy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Basically about 75% of being a manager. To be an audience.

</comment><comment><USER13> On guitar, it's only if I practiced first :D otherwise it seems to have the opposite effect

<comment><USER14> I think I bombed the first 10 times I was on stage.

<comment><USER13> On a semi-related note... I started a new instrument this year... I've been taking a video every week. My first video is absolutely hilarious. This method is really encouraging, it's really easy to see progress

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm a reasonable tennis player. I've noticed, if someone's watching (especially an attractive girl), my effort and concentration seems to increase. Sometimes this results in me playing out of my skin and hitting shots I didn't even know I could make! Same with snooker, at which I'm distinctly average. If someone's watching, I've often knocked in a pot from 3 meters away, but in practice, it's a shot I'd make 1 out of 50 times. Strange!

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of this (awesome) song..

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=SoCn9HBvlJM](https://youtube.com/watch?v=SoCn9HBvlJM)

I can't play 'cause I need a reason

No one here that I aim to pleasin'

There's a joint next door and I hate to barge in

But I play better with girls watchin'

</comment><comment><USER17> I've noticed this in real life. If I run in the city I push myself harder than if I run in a more remote park. Further if I run in the city along a route popular with other runners I'll run even harder (the stats provided by my running app also backs this perception up).

</comment><comment><USER18> On the one hand, writing code on a white board in an interview should be easier, because I have an audience.

On the other hand, I don't normally write code on a white board and I rely on the IDE to correct my syntax (and other) mistakes. So white board coding is a more complex task than my normal coding. So white board coding is harder and I do it more poorly.

On the other hand, if nothing is at stake, if it's just a friendly discussion about how to do something, among friends, I'm less nervous and it's more fun.

But if a potential job is on the line and I'm in front of strangers, it's more stressful and my performance suffers.

I don't know. What's the biggest effect?

</comment><comment><USER19> With people working remotely and companies abandoning open floor plans, I think a lot of people might disagree. Privacy seems to increase productivity through lower distractions and stress, at least for me.

<comment><USER10> I think the more important audience for programmers isn't those who see your face but those who see your code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Related: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect) from the early 1930s

</comment><comment><USER21> There are people who live stream their coding sessions on twitch/youtube. Here one talking about it (linked to the relevant part):

[http://meow.noopkat.com/lessons-from-one-year-of- streaming-o...](http://meow.noopkat.com/lessons-from-one-year-of-streaming-on- twitch/#awkwardness)

</comment><comment><USER22> It may still take time for people's notion of performance to gravitate to literal creative energy and to how the audience contributes and co-creates anything on a stage. In pragmatic artistic theories it's an obvious fact and art impossible without this idea.

</comment><comment><USER23> Possibly related: when you have difficulty being self-motivated.

When you have a deadline, at which time someone will look over your work, it's similar to having an audience.

</comment><comment><USER24> i think this is a strong case in favor of pair programming.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is this also the case in the boudoir?

</comment><comment><USER26> ... they clearly did not have people type simple things into a computer with somebody standing over their shoulder.</comment>


Apple's Response to the Final Cut Pro X Release - <AUTHOR> http://www.winstonhearn.com/home/2011/6/23/apples-response-to-the-final-cut-pro-x-release.html <comment><USER2> His post seems a bit optimistic to me. Re-adding a bunch of features removed from a software product (presumably for some reason -- a huge underlying architecture change?) is a much more difficult thing to come up with a timeline for than the relatively minor changes made for his other examples were.

Apple may respond to the outcry against Final Cut Pro X, but I doubt it'll do much in the way of making promises of exactly what features will be back and exactly when.

</comment><comment><USER3> If there are such important features then why are they missing? Makes me wonder why companies do not track "feature use"? Something like a report that gets phoned home once and a while with what features users are actually using.

</comment><comment><USER4> Final Cut Pro 7 is still available as a floppy disk install.

</comment><comment><USER5> I could see them releasing a migration tool. Maybe it wouldn't support everything, forcing you to render some clips, but it would be better than nothing.</comment>


Facebook Grew Twice As Fast As Twitter In July - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/12/facebook-grew-twice-as-fast-as-twitter-in-july/

<comment><USER2> I have yet to see a web analytics report that takes into account Twitter API usage.</comment>


A Curated List of Awesome Game Networking Resources - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MFatihMAR/Awesome-Game-Networking <comment><AUTHOR> After searching for some game networking resources on Google, I realized that it's really hard to find good resources. I decided to create a curated (aka awesome) list of game networking resources to make it easier for everyone who wants to read articles, follow tutorials or try out example projects. Please feel free to contribute by adding some new awesome stuff and make it much more bigger!</comment>


The Emperor's New Amplifier (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.normankoren.com/Audio/TENA.html <comment><USER3> The problem with having an amazingly transparent signal chain (although I doubt that valves are the way to achieve this but he seems to know what he's talking about,) is that it pushes all the responsibility onto you the listener, to choose program material that is well engineered and artistically resonant enough to justify all that outlay. It's like having special eye surgery to visit galleries. It doesn't quite add up.

Consider that the gear Miles Davis made all his music through sounded completely fucked by this guy's standards. For some reason, harmonic distortion produced before the 80s is art, and harmonic distortion produced after the 80s is an affront. Its like some kind of analog/digital existential nostalgia. I blame postmodernism.

The more transparent the amplifier, the better the music has to be, or you really are wasting your time. If you just want to build high performance electronic equipment, there are much more interesting areas to work in than simply applying gain to a pair of AC signals while preserving their phase relationship.

But yeah, each to his own I guess. I expect these questions are half the fun if you're into designing your own amplifiers.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, audiophilia was somewhat justified in the 60s when gear that _wasn 't_ "high-fidelity" was of objectively lower quality, and also much more variable between manufacturers and even individual units. When taking your valves to the the tube tester at Radio Shack was a viable business model.

This built an entire sociology of competitive audio listening, like a much nerdier version of the car performance tinkering of the same time. People got very emotionally invested in this kind of quality one-upsmanship.

In the 80s MOSFET amps became viable, cheap and widespread. The baseline quality was now so much better that non-experts stopped caring much - <USER2> could buy anything in the hifi shop and get reasonable results. But the culture lives on, lost in the jungle, worshipping at a shrine that almost all the population has abandoned.

TVs and computer graphics are approaching this tipping point from "more money buys you noticeably more quality" to "actually I can't see the difference from the cheap baseline and neither can the people I want to show off to". Notice how 4k hasn't taken off dramatically.

<comment><USER5> It's funny that you mention TV and computer graphics, because TV and computer sound has not been a case of "buy anything in the hifi shop and get reasonable results". When using the audio chain built into modern motherboards I consistently hear noise from some bus or another polluting the actual audio output. Poorly-designed, poorly-shielded amps still happen and unlike modern video output it's not a digital signal that has error correction built in.

<comment><USER4> Very true. PCs ship with lowest-common-denominator powered speakers and noisy headphone outs. The average customer and even the gaming customer doesn't seem to care much. People who do get USB output devices or send SPDIF to their existing surround system. Maybe Macbooks are less bad at this?

<comment><USER3> Macbooks are indeed great at this. They can output 24 bit 48khz IIRC. And I'm pretty sure there's even DSP in there to model the resonances of the case and cancel them out when using the speakers.

And BTW gaming motherboards now commonly have audio interfaces with isolated power rails and stuff.

<comment><USER6> Almost anything can output that now (or actually much higher) because of Intel's High Definition Audio (AKA Azalia)

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

The real benefits of a macbook is the 192 kHz (on recent models) tosLink optical out integrated into the headphone jack, which is just an awesome feature that I really wish other laptop manufacturers would pick up.

DSPs for resonances/tuning has however been picked up pretty widely (under a wide variety of brandings/quality)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is basically the pinnacle of 1960s audio design. You can tell the author was trained in this era and knows his stuff by his reference to Bob Pease. On the other hand, he seems to regard MOSFET power supply regulation with suspicion.

People in other comments have asked how modern class D amps perform. There are people doing a similar kind of thing with aggressively purist design craftsmanship, e.g. [http://www.hypex.nl/technology/ucd.html](http://www.hypex.nl/technology/ucd.html) \- producing a similar nice flat Bode plot. The _really_ cheap ones may be suspect and spew EMI everywhere, but if you're not quite so concerned with shaving pennies off the price they're perfectly acceptable.

<comment><USER7> Maybe I can help translate the author's EE work into "HN speak" in that what the author did with this amp design is similar to how programmers do "turing tarpit" language challenges.

The game rules are usually picked based on how much the player wants to put up with. His spec for low freq 3dB down is weirdly low to me because I don't own drivers that run that low (LOL) although the spec for 1dB down is probably more "audiophile relevant". I suppose as a design goal if a recording has a 5 hz signal I'd want it to be properly amplified for the speakers to turn into heat instead of sound, rather than clipping and making noisy harmonics every 5 or 10 hz up the band, so there is that justification, but, why not input filter instead of just making heat in the speaker crossover?

In this story, the game rules were use as little post-1970 components as possible while maxing out various specs to beyond human hearing. A good analogy for programmers would be writing a quicksort in BF or intercal. You don't do that because you need production code, you do that on a dare or to see if its possible or for the sheer heck of it.

Personally if I needed 50 or so watts I'd use a TI TPA3116 and call it good. There's kits available on ebay and elsewhere, its a stereotypical more than a couple watts less than a hundred watts modern class D amp. Simple design one chip no need for heatsink at lower power out. Does need 24V power and a heatsink for full power out. The chip costs about a buck. But that breaks the rules of the game because those didn't ship till maybe two or three years ago, not 1965.

<comment> mark-r I think you don't understand the project at all. The point wasn't to play some game by doing something retro, the point was to create an amp that sounds as good as reasonably possible. There are many people who believe that tubes are the best way to do this. I can't say they're wrong; the most realistic sound I've ever heard came from a tube amp in a shop.

<comment><USER8> I wonder how literal the parent was being. He seems to be walking the line. I think from the parents point of view he 'gets' what the original post was going after. Its just more... busting out the oscilloscope graphs to prove transparency at sub human audible levels while at the same time picking components because you can 'hear' the difference is a contradiction. Basic fundamental point is from a pure amplification of signal without distortion standpoint there are components that can get you there for a lot less effort today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is absolutely fantastic, and thoroughly technical -- particularly the SPICE simulations. After becoming equally engrossed in designing a "perfect" microphone capsule, I'm tempted to build one myself.

This was written 12 years ago -- I wonder how the author feels now. Specifically I'm curious if the author is still contented with the equipment. Also, apropos of nothing save for sheer curiosity, I'm interested to know what input media (i.e., specific recordings and formats) and output equipment the author used (or uses) for both testing and pleasure.

<comment><USER10> Looking at the submitter's id, I'd guess he's still happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually the author's son, but I can confirm that yes, he's still happy with it. Remarkably, it seems to have resulted in a permanent remission of what had previously seemed like terminal audiophilia (remodelling the house to properly dampen its resonance, that kind of thing). He has since channelled his obsessive tendencies into digital imaging, which is an altogether more profitable endeavour.

<comment><USER11> Are you Henry, or is Henry Koren your brother? I knew an hkoren way back in the olden days on the vwvortex forums....

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm Nathan. Henry is my brother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _I thought about commercializing it, especially when the lab where I worked > announced it was shutting down, but I soon realized that marketing high-end > tube amplifiers is not a reliable way to make a living. (I 'm paycheck- > addicted.) _

It is wonderful that Kickstarter has removed much of the risk for people like this, that are obviously incredibly talented and have produced something great, but don't necessarily have the desire/risk-appetite to make it commercially without a proven market.

</comment><comment><USER13> Speakers still add orders of magnitude more distortion than your amps, much like they did in the 1960s, unless you're using something insane like a servo- controlled Meyer X-10 (with an integrated amp, natch).

<comment><USER14> Also, more important than amp transparency (which is pretty easy these days) is how the amplifier reacts to the difficult loads many high end speakers present

<comment><USER13> For decent, modern amps, not really, as long as you're not getting something like the interaction between the output filter of a class D amp and the loudspeaker (as happened with some Crown class D amplifiers and some EAW speakers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here is another "make your own incredible tube amplifier" from a Dutch gentleman. I'd be interested to hear from someone who understands this stuff, how it compares. [http://www.mennovanderveen.nl/eng/index.html](http://www.mennovanderveen.nl/eng/index.html)

Also, I'd like to hear for myself how they both compare to the $20 solid state amps. [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0049P6OTI/downandout...](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0049P6OTI/downandoutint-20)

<comment><USER7> As a piece of performance art, they are polar opposites.

One is a craftsmanship project hand built according to some peculiar rules (pre 1970s tech when possible, etc) and methodically designed to optimize performance and then tested to verify that performance.

The $30 amazon mass produced amp ships with a 1.5 amp power supply that was restickered to 2 amps (hope your fire insurance is paid up) and can't provide marketed power with the supply as provided anyway depending on speaker impedance connected and no one has any detailed performance stats so who knows how well it compares in all the parameters that matter. Also it runs about 1/10th the power of the tube amp. Finally it is a class D amp but the chip mfgr went all closed source on making a "special" D that got patented as "T", the "T" designator is merely marketing. Its a relatively early class D amp, I would assume modern class D amps would outperform it.

Note that both amps are antique in their own way, one is a "70s amp" and the other is a "turn of the century amp".

As a piece of art, one is roughly a highly talented semi-pro artist classic inspired painting, and the other is a walmart poster copy of a "Dale Earnhardt on black velvet" memorial mass produced kitsch, should be pretty obvious which is which.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> First time I visited Koren's website and read about his "perfect amp" was about 10 years ago (around 2006 - when I was designing and building my "perfect amp"). So this article definitely brings me back to simpler times.

I always found this design waaaay too complex. Some sections seem unnecessary while others don't make sense (but that's just me - and it doesn't help that the schematic is drawn a little convoluted). But I suppose it totally depends on his amp's application (e.g. playing records, studio monitors, live guitar, bass amp, etc), so it really may be the perfect amp ...for his specific application.

My thoughts... the power supply is a little too "verbose" for a tube amp -- just unnecessarily complex, and may actually remove some of the imperfections associated with that crispy "classic tube amp" sound. But I am a strong advocate of a well-designed power supply, so I can't say anything bad about it. But there's too much going on between phase-inverter and power amp stages (output drivers I presume). I would never do that, but to each their own. However, I do like that he used 6550s. Great tubes!

</comment><comment><USER17> I am wondering why high-end amplifiers are still so expensive. Amplification should be a solved problem by now.

Also, what I miss most in the whole sound chain is that I can't change the volume of the tracks that existed before they were mixed into a single track. For example, making the volume of that trumpet in the background a little louder, etc.

<comment><USER18> > _I am wondering why high-end amplifiers are still so expensive._

I think it's a bit like why Gucci handbags are still so expensive. Because they are high end; there are people who are willing to spend that much, even if what I would call an engineer's assessment "do I get a reasonable bang for buck ratio" clearly answers NO. People by an experience, they buy a feeling. And it may be money well spent for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Norman, the copyright symbol is broken at the bottom on your photo pages pages [http://www.normankoren.com/index.html](http://www.normankoren.com/index.html) Suggest you use ©

<comment> mark-r Lots of stuff broken on other pages as well. The problem is that the meta tag identifies charset=ISO-8859-1, when it really should be Windows-1252.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/02/to-the-audiophile- this-...](http://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/02/to-the-audiophile- this-10000-ethernet-cable-apparently-makes-sense/) Don't forget that these things exist because at least some people buy them.</comment>


The Benjamin Franklin Effect - <AUTHOR> http://www.attendly.com/the-benjamin-franklin-effect-and-why-you-need-to-quit-your-job-before-its-too-late/

<comment><USER2> Along similar lines, Daniel Kahneman in _Thinking Fast and Slow_ advises writing down your thoughts before entering a meeting as you are likely to be affected by the ensuing discussion. You can extend that logic to jobs, relationships, and any activity where you might want to observe your own bias.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure if this is linkbait or just HN bait.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's neither. It's hopefully good content which people get to decide by voting up, or voting down.

You don't game HN by writing link bait, because articles without substance are rarely voted up. You just write what you hope is great content, and HN is one of the places you will seed it if you think it is appropriate for a tech audience.

<comment><USER3> Oh, well it's a good thing this has any content that couldn't be had by just reading the Wikipedia article it links.

I guess it's novel in that the headline says something completely different from the article. Do you have a separate editor for your headlines, or is that excuse only for newspapers?</comment></comment></comment>


Hire Athletes - <AUTHOR> http://42floors.com/blog/hire-athletes/

<comment><USER2> Yikes this is a bad article. The author makes no connection to how the attributes he describes are more commonly found in athletes. What makes them generalists? Why are they adaptive? Why are they 'makers'?

And even worse I think he missed a good opportunity to talk about what kind of attributes an athlete may bring to the table in general, or specifically at a startup. Attributes I have noticed _:

-An ability to take criticism. Usually coaches don't hold back telling you what you're doing wrong and how to fix it. I've had a lacrosse coach go through every player on a team and publicly tell them what they do poorly. I'm not saying that is the best coaching style, but it gets you used to handling criticism and responding to it. -An ability to face failure. At one point or another everyone fails at sports. Usually it happens a lot. Being able to respond and grow from those failures can be really important, especially at a startup. -Competitiveness. Obviously by competing a lot athlete will have a desire to win. In addition, I've found they have a "do anything to win" attitude that can be great at a startup when you need people to fill in rolls that may not be glamorous or cool but are integral to success

_these attribues aren't only found in athletes, but I have found them more often with athletes more than the general populous

</comment><comment><USER3> I can't tell if this is literally talking about people who compete in physical activities or not. I feel like you could replace every instance of the word "athlete" with "ninja" or some other term and it would make just as much sense. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> The definition of "athlete" as it is used in this article is most popular in college football. There are a variety of set positions (jobs) in football and each player generally only plays one or two positions. The term athlete is used to describe a player who doesn't have one particular set position. This is either because of their versatility or a lack of any specific specialized skill. More often than not, a player will be labeled an athlete as they enter college but will quickly be assigned a position in order for him to focus his training.

The idea is that athletes are rawer, more malleable, more flexible, but riskier and generally less skilled (therefore probably cheaper) employees when compared to true specialists. This makes them good hires for startups.

The article could have benefited from actually saying this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This metaphor will probably fly over most people's head.

It makes perfect sense to me if you can imagine the progression of a beginner entering any sport

When you try to become more athletic do you shoot more free throws or run more passing routes ? Neither. Your goal is to build a strong foundation in strength, speed, agility, and power up to an elite level and then specialize once you've decided what sport or position you want to play to tailor your training appropriately.

</comment><comment> dumb-typist WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.

I don't understand why so far (6 comments) people are commenting seriously on this essay.

This essay looks like a somewhat mechanical prank to me, as if someone decided to:

1\. Assemble generic hacker news style article about why hackers are good. For example, "Hackers are always making things, they can't help themselves". [RE- EDIT: This is an actual quote from the essay, except that the word "athletes" was used instead of "hackers".]

2\. Make it stupid by substituting "athlete" for "hacker". Maybe they thought this would be an obvious absurdity because they think hackers are "nerds", and that "nerds" and "jocks" are obvious opposites?

3\. Make it slightly less obvious by dressing it up with a little extra athlete-related stuff, like the cartoons about athletes.

I would also like to suggest that "Jason Freedman" is an obvious parody substitution for "Jason Fried." Also, "42floors" <\--> "37 signals" [EDIT: My God, it turns out these are supposedly a real person and his real company. Coincidence, or convenient choice to surf on the influence of similarity?]

My take: do you spend too much time reading "Hacker News", so hurriedly that your credulity muscles get too much exercise?

<comment><USER6> Nothing you say here is substantiated. Why is it bad to laud hackers? Why is the term "athlete" more "stupid" than "hacker?" How do sports cartoons make the "parody" less conspicuous?

On you final note, both 42floors and Jason Freedman are real entities:

<https://angel.co/42floors>

<http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jason-freedman>

I don't understand why you think the name _Jason Freedman_ is suspicious. The name Jason is common. The name Freedman is common. God forbid they appear in tandem and vaguely resemble the name of another entrepreneur.

This piece doen't read as a prank in any discernible way. It might be preaching to the choir to an extent, but it's not suspicious.

<comment> dumb-typist There's nothing inherently bad about lauding hackers. But the essay as published said, " _Athletes_ are always making things; they can't help themselves". That makes no sense. What makes some sense is if someone started with text about hackers, and substituted the word "athletes".

The term "athlete" is not a stupid term. But substituting it for "hacker" sometimes produces absurd results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Read closely and you'll spot this...

"Metaphorically speaking, that is. I don't mean athletes as in people who play sports. Athletes, as in people that can play any position within your startup. It means someone is first and foremost a generalist. "

</comment><comment><USER8> That sounds like a great way to run afoul of employment law.</comment>


I am James Altucher, founder of 20 companies (17 of which failed). AMA. - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fssv7/i_am_james_altucher_founder_of_20_companies_17_of/

<comment><USER2> A good read, full of knee-jerk comments about how he's an idiot for telling people not to go to school and not to buy a house. The classic "I am going to state a fact" rebuttal instead of actually thinking about what James is saying and possibly learning something from him.

Now James may very well be wrong, stupid, or insane (or all three), but that doesn't mean his advice isn't worth considering when you think about his non- inherited success.</comment>


I Launched My Startup Yesterday, This Is How The Hectic Day Went - james-fend http://www.webstartup.me/launched-startup-yesterday-hectic-day <comment><AUTHOR> I'm Xposting this from his blog... don't think it will make it past moderation:

Looks intriguing but be very careful with your credibility; a freelancing site that's considered untrustworthy is a failed freelancing site. I say this because I saw your post about "Launched yesterday" then on your site I see the testimonial "Freelancify helped us find a great designer to get our blog launched. -GrowNasheville" Wait- the site launched yesterday and someone has already taken a transaction from idea to proposal to bidding to work to review to launch & payment? huh? That doesn't exactly add up… maybe there was a private beta launch with a few dozen vendors and a couple clients…?

Who is this "GrowNasheville", anyway? GrowNasheville.com/blog/about : "GrowNashville was created and organized by James Fend [the founder of freelancify.com]…" ahh… I see.

You will have testimonials soon enough, I'm sure; having them now is not worth risking your credibility. [EDIT: At the risk of stating the obvious: _you can't write your own testimonials_.]

Good luck!

<comment><USER2> Also, I dunno if it helps to say you've just launched yesterday. I rather try to pretend that I'm old and established by putting (C) 2008-2012 or something in the footer.

<comment><USER3> Blatant lies are not the way to appear trustworthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think I get it; I've never launched a site, so maybe that's why. I'm going to be critical and skeptical about this particular _post_ , but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's laudable, stressful, and exciting to launch a product by yourself (and I'm glad you are getting front page press here)

Why would James launch at 5:30 AM after getting no sleep? This sounds like a good way to make mistakes, make it hard to keep up with issues that come up, and generally make the day seem hectic when it maybe didn't need to be (and in fact wasn't). Was there a mission critical launch deadline? Were there key users to be gained at 5:30 AM? Instead, he took a three hour nap during business hours, with emails and bugs accruing that needed "immediate attention".

In fact, it doesn't sound like a very hectic day to me at all. A three hour nap in the middle of the day? An hour long victory lunch? Those sounds like the wonderful rewards of having a flexible (read: no) schedule. James worked hard leading up to the launch day, for sure. But on launch day, he spent one to two hours writing two emails, and one hour fixing a certificate bug. 3 hours. The rest was spent refreshing logs and being excited. Fun! Not hectic.

Aptly, "THE DAY'S RESULTS" is a large, prominent chart with... one data point.

What am I supposed to be interested in here?

<comment><USER5> Whenever I push a new version of an app, I always do it in the morning after having slept a good night.

It's very important to be alert and able to react in case something goes very wrong. Launching after being up 20 hours is taking risks for no reason.

<comment> james-fend Live and learn. I prob won't make that mistake again as I just woke up from a crash nap and trying to catch up on blog comments..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please, lose the page-blocking pop-up. It's one of the worst web practices and I wouldn't even bothered reading the article if it weren't so praised in the comments. It's always easier to close a page than close the pop-up.

<comment> james-fend Turned off. You're the 2nd person to suggest that. Thanks.

<comment><USER7> You may not want to turn it off. From an advertising perspective I would suggest you split-test it. Yeah it will annoy some people, but entry-pops have great effect and are used by most performance marketers whenever possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats on the launch but to me it appears to be just another elance.

What makes you different?

As a freelancer who charges a lot more than $10/h and isn't interested in $200 projects why should I join?

<comment> james-fend The ability to tell the person who posted the project that their project will be a piece of crap if they try to get something done for that much and why.

<comment> james-fend Also, those spray and pray 'generic' bids that many companies on Elance and oDesk can't get away with that. So they actually have to display some sort brain power and ability to the project poster.

The ability for the project poster not be embarded by 40-50 bids all at the same time and not having a clue about their work ethic/communication/etc. and going purely off of reviews and botched portfolios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its really great that so many people signed up listing actual US rates.

On the other hand, almost all of the projects are $500 or less, most of them $300 or less. Which are outsourcing budgets, and pretty much incompatible with the US rates for most projects.

I wonder what you could do to get U.S. organizations with actual project budgets to use these types of sites. I have always wished there was something like a US-only freelancer's site. Maybe this person could create a section where only US freelancers could bid, or a section that had a minimum rate at $40 or something.

I really like odesk because I am used to being poor and I always know I can find a spec to prototype and get a job without having to leave my house or network or anything, but I can't afford healthcare or my own apartment.

I had a few "real" gigs with a good US rate but I spent too much time working on my startup and ran out of money, sort of panicked and picked up a job at an outsourcing rate, and now I feel like I should to move to Bangalore in order to maintain my standard of living.

</comment><comment><USER10> well done on launching,

If you've not launched anything before, be warned that your traffic is going to drop like a stone now. What are your plans to keep the traffic going?

<comment> james-fend work my ass. get creative. then repeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think one of the big take-aways for me was do more substantial testing _before_ pulling all the tricks out of your hat to get traffic. Imagine if his email list had been 10,000 people, how many would have been turned off by that first impression?

<comment> james-fend Yes, true. The urge to get user validation was too much.. besides, I can always email the list again in a few weeks to let them know of fixes and enhancements. Like a 'we listened to you and here's what we did... ' email

<comment><USER12> Also, get some sleep before launching. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are those considered good numbers?

Feedback:

\- the search button isn't aligned properly

\- why everyone have 5 stars? and why are the stars gray? they look sad.

\- clicking on the category name should check its box

\- why can't I click on the top categories on the main page?

<comment> james-fend thanks for the list.. getting small quirks like this fixed is my goal for this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good job man, had a brief look around, looks swish. Hope to have a more in depth look a bit later on. One thing i did notice in your signup form for workers, i hit enter accidentally before filling out 1 field. This caused an error and i lost all the information i had previously entered. Barring password and perhaps username do you think that the form should reload the information if an error has occured? Something to consider perhaps when you have the time :P

<comment> james-fend Thanks.. yep, fixing that is on the list

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very inspiring. Thanks for sharing, and congratulations! You seem to have done everything right. Now continue putting the same type of effort and don't let it crumble.

<comment> james-fend Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congrats - looks great and learning Ruby well enough in 8 weeks to build this is inspiring. Another reminder that there is no excuse to not learn myself. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER17> I was James's Rails mentor and I can testify that he definitely did not know Ruby on Rails at the beginning of November, but he is sharp.

<comment><USER18> Although I can program already, I'm sure most people would agree that James's idea of putting a post on his learning experience of Ruby would be an interesting read.

<comment><USER19> I agree. I'm trying to learn RoR right now. Seems fast for 8 weeks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Would you consider posting weekly updates? I would really like to read them and I'm sure they'd contribute some traffic to new site.

<comment> james-fend Yeah definitely. If you want to, you can choose to subscribe on the right and it should auto-email you with each new post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can you please put a note in your calendar to do a new post on January 25, 2013 "I Launched my Startup one year ago, this is how the hectic year went" :)

Great job on the launch, sounds like you got some good numbers coming into the site and it was good to get an inside look into response rates/conversion based on a moderate initial launch email list.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've looked at a few freelance sites before, but turned away because all the "Requests for help" want an e-bay clone for $200.

It's at that point I think the entire site is rubbish (low quality offers for work etc), so I think you may want to ensure work offers are reasonable to set a standard.

</comment><comment><USER23> Inspired by some of the things bdg said, I'm thinking, could you find a niche a service that allows only US-only freelancers?

There's got to be a market for people who are willing to pay more simply to not have to deal with overseas developers.

</comment><comment><USER24> Thanks for sharing your launch story! Would you be willing to share the stats on the 310 emails you collected over the past 7 months? I would be interested in seeing the open & bounce rates specifically.

<comment> james-fend Shoot me an email firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are you considering adding any other payments types? Not a fan of paypal.

<comment> james-fend Either am I. That's why the app uses Stripe to process our own payments. What others do you suggest to add?

<comment><USER11> Dwolla might be a good alternative

<comment> james-fend How could I forget?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here's some feedback, take with it what you will.

I like that you're starting yet another freelancer site, simply because I _hate_ the other ones. They're full of often sub-quality contractors spamming the boards hoping to hit one and take some money. The other bids are from nations where the exchange rate makes my yearly salary make me look like a king. I take what I do seriously, I like serious clients, and I've find next to no success on these freelance sites (I may have found a few projects where I could make $100/h, but the volume of those jobs is small). I have no way to sell my skills on these sites. I'm not saying I have the answer, I'm simply explaining why I hate the other freelance sites.

Looking over your site, the first thing that jumps out at me is "City, State". I am from Canada, where we have provinces. Are you an international site? Your registration form could do with a bit of tweaking, I make mental jumps between "Persona", "Security" and "Location" a number of times. OAuth would have been nice.

The profile setup drop-downs are not obvious what they do until I interact like them, I feel like it is missing the down-arrow to the right. Nice-to-have if the category drop-downs didn't allow me to reproduce things, or I could leave one empty, add more, etc.

Next is who I've seen already-- Someone wants a full website for about $300, that's a critical issue with other sites. There's no real negotiation going on, the customer feels like they only need to spend $200, which, even for someone charging $25/hour means "do it an a day." Something like the sports site isn't scoped out as a massive endeavor, but it's bigger than the asking price. Yet out the other door, someone is asking for someone to scrape an XML feed for emails every hour for $500. Again, I'm not sure how to deal with these things, but these are reasons I'm not a fan of these sites.

The "More" position on the job posting makes me think that there is more text in the description simply because "more" at the end of a paragraph everywhere else on the internet means that. (more)

Your next challenge would be getting heavy traffic. I recently started blogging and my traffic looks like this: <http://i.imgur.com/WuPOC.png> . Some articles I posted to reddit's programming, some I posted here, and I really learnt that I'm dealing with different audiences, reddit was more interested in my walk through of a project-euler solution, hacker-news was more interested in something on self-improvement. Most of my articles haven't hit the right-spot the first few had that brought me lots of traffic, this is three-fold. First, I'm not posting them in the right places, most people who are programming simply don't care about a number of hand-wavy concept things I talk about (but a good number of people do, just not the /r/programming or HN crowd). The second factor for my drop in traffic is I simply did not put the extra effort, that final 10% into my posts that I did with my first few. My big-traffic posts I had easily put through three or four drafts, let them sit for a week or two while I reflected on them, I just put more work into them, covered more corners. The last factor was my website usability, which was totally awful and I'm attempting to hack blogger templates to fix a number of things that many of my readers are pained by.

What I'd apply to you from what I learnt was that you need to find the right place to sell this, I'm thrilled to see you've launched but you need to put your product in front of people with a sales-pitch that brings them in. You need lots of people who want feelancers, and you need slightly less freelancers. If I knew the best places to target those people, I'd tell you. However, I'm sure if you did find the right place, 400~ hits would seem like an anthill.

<comment><USER18> To add to bdg's response....

I've experienced 12designer's project posting and they have been separating by category and putting a minimum project price on projects within specific categories. The price can be raise, but can't be lowered. A minimum price could help standardized the playing field.

To quote bdg: "take with it what you will"

<comment><USER27> One thing comes to mind: if you eliminate lowball pricing, would that not get rid of the very reason most freelance sites exist? What I mean is if I'm willing to pay leading market rate for site design work, wouldn't it be likely that I can find a handful of leading designers that I could choose from?

Ditto for programming and so on. Once freelance sites solve the problem of "I can't find anybody", most devolve into a race to the bottom where it's unlikely that you'll find quality even if you're willing to pay leading market rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As someone looking to learn to code from scratch and build a Web/smartphone app, I'm curious what your coding background was before your 8 week ruby cram session began?

<comment> james-fend great question. I was a web designer working with only html/css. I had no clue what an MVC was before I got told the best route is to learn Rails by Josh.

I'll definitely be making a blog post about the learning Rails aspect as it was requested alot today. If you want, I'd suggest to subscribe that way it'll email you when that post is created.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "12:30AM - I go to have a celebration lunch for finally launching. And I get absolutely stuffed! Hmm… lunch special fajitas"

You time traveled!? I do the same after a lack of sleep. :)

<comment> james-fend lmao.. fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This looks just like all the other sites where people want full e-commerce solutions or groupon clones for 200$.

</comment><comment><USER31> Heartiest congratulations for launching. I have signed up as I like to do some freelance work. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER32> Congrats for launching!

I remember from thefastlaneforum.com you were developing Fendza, what happened to that project?

<comment> james-fend Hey man! Thanks! Errr.. long story. I kind of broke it down on there with this thread: [http://www.thefastlaneforum.com/progress- threads/32190-progr...](http://www.thefastlaneforum.com/progress- threads/32190-progress-thread-james-f-startup-2-a.html)

<comment><USER32> Glad you didn't gave up. Best of luck with this one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well done James! Congrats on the launch and sharing your story. Nothing like these posts to inspire!

<comment> james-fend thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Well done on launching! Under how it works I'd suggest numbering the steps.

<comment> james-fend Great suggestion! Will do today..

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm curious about what kind of setup you have running the site.

</comment><comment><USER36> congrats - what are you trying to learn with your first launch?

<comment><USER37> Oh, good question! Hopefully we get an answer. As someone planning to launch this year I'm eager to learn from someone doing it now.</comment></comment>


The life, death, and rebirth of BlackBerry's hometown - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/45438/the-life-death-and-rebirth-of-blackberrys-hometown/

<comment><USER2> "Waterloo was never the most obvious tech hub... That changed in 1984, when Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregan, two engineering students at the University of Waterloo, started a company to develop a wireless data transmission device."

The author didn't do enough research about waterloo. It was an obvious tech hub way back in the 50s, from the moment UW added an engineering faculty. It was cemented as the place for Canadian computer science when math was made it's own faculty and the fledgling school had one of the only computers in the whole country.

While RIM is the best known, it was hardly the first successful startup fostered straight out of UW. It has always churned out startups and spin off companies, long before startup culture was a thing. Engineering professors and students had long been encouraged to take leave to develop commercial products well before the founding of RIM.

The article also skims over a huge reason Waterloo region didn't slide into depression when RIM faltered: it was the icing on the economic cake, not the main batter. The universities remained strong, as did the true economic base, the insurance giants. Lots of companies, some new players and other established tech giants, have scrambled to add new icing but the basic makeup of the region has hardly changed.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Compared to Silicon Valley, Canada's technology industry has always been low- key and workmanlike. There aren't any Ubers here, companies that transform entire industries in highly obvious ways. Instead, the start-up landscape is dotted with companies that have dull but necessary functions."

It's not quite Silicon Valley, but Montreal's (and Toronto's) start-up scene is anything but dull.</comment>


Programmer Destroys $7 Billion Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0410/063.html <comment><USER2> The article doesn't get into the downsides of Asterisk, which include support and hardware costs (<http://tinyurl.com/52pbvm>)</comment>


Ask HN: What types of knowledge are worth knowing? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I feel this question is overly broad. As I take it, it means, "what should I know?"

It reminds me of the Robert A. Heinlein quote:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

A broad range of knowledge can scaffold together to reach new heights. Some knowledge that at once seemed useless can come back later (in light of other, newer knowledge) to become quite useful.

<comment><USER3> > A broad range of knowledge can scaffold together to reach new heights. Some > knowledge that at once seemed useless can come back later (in light of > other, newer knowledge) to become quite useful.

This is synthesis, and to feed it you have to (as you point out) have a broad range of knowledge. You don't need deep knowledge in every area, sometimes just knowing the surface is sufficient. But by having a wide enough knowledge base you can draw on those other areas when needed or make those random observations that reduce seemingly intractable problems in one domain to solved problems from another domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're pragmatic and interested in being happy, I would recommend knowing as little as possible. If you keep learning, there's a point at which you'll know far more than a most people are capable of understanding. From that point forward, communicating with most people will become progressively more challenging and less satisfying. The finite pool of people that you can communicate with effectively will shrink. To survive in the world you'll need to actively work at dumbing your initial thoughts down to simple sentences that don't require a broad range of knowledge to understand.

<comment><USER5> If you're pragmatic and interested in being happy, I would recommend knowing as much as possible. If you keep learning, you'll be able to understand much better what motivates and hinders other people. The depth of your understanding will enable you to convey complex but practical information in everyday language. Your value as a helpful and effective teacher will be widely recognized. The most effective writers also fall in this category.

<comment><USER6> I'm sorry to say that _beenBoutIT_ is spot on. As someone who actually values learning about a broad range of things, I find the more I learn the fewer people I can interact w/. This is because 1) it becomes more difficult to tolerate the nonsense that the avg. person is steeped in; and 2) because people aren't that interested in knowing things that contradict their imagined existence, their perception of self.

> _Your value as a helpful and effective teacher will be widely recognized_

Not so much. Think of it w/respect to a bell curve. Most of the people on the curve aren't going to give two hoots about learning. Of the rest, they may thirst for knowledge, but may not appreciate that someone who isn't them has what they perceive to be _superior_ knowledge. All of this is very "interesting" to see play out when you start introducing 'variables' like age, sex, ethnicity/race, even professional titles. And even if you are recognized as being a "helpful and effective teacher," people will not take kindly to not being able to access you _on demand_ , for the most obvious of mundanities.

I spare everyone a religious example and go w/one of my favorite scenes from the Matrix trilogy. IIRC, in pt.II, there's the scene w/ the guy who betrays Neo and co., because he hates his life in Zion. He wants to return to 'life' _in_ the Matrix. He's seated @ a table with a 'steak dinner and a bottle of red wine'. As he takes a bite of the steak, he mentions knowing that the steak isn't really there, but he loves thinking that it is.

I find that character to be representative of a great many people. Sure there are those who don't realize that there is a Matrix, but there are many more who are aware of it, and purposefully choose to pretend otherwise. And they don't take kindly to people saying anything that denies them that steak dinner.

So, learn for your own fulfillment with the understanding that the cost is quite high.

BTW, w/ regard to the OP, I think broad conceptual knowledge is best. Try to know a little about many things so that you can dig into subjects as needed.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you and beenBoutIT

The Matrix scene you are referring to is "Ignorance is Bliss" scene.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your support. The Matrix Trilogy, IMO, is highly underrated. The 'action' (and lack thereof in parts 2 & 3) really distracted people from understanding what the whole thing was about. And of course, because of its age, I meet many people who've never seen any of the films. Oh well, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't comprehensively answer this question as it is very broad, but one type of knowledge that sprang to mind immediately when I read the question is knowing what you don't know.

I think after we work with something for a long time it is easy to assume we know almost everything about that thing, or at least everything that matters, even though much of the time we are only exposed to a small subsection of it. We may be very effective and knowledgeable in an area in the context of our day to day work and lose sight of how much more there may be to learn about it. This is a shame because we may be missing out on more exciting and useful knowledge in an area we care about. Remembering that there is always more to learn and recognising that we may not know as much as we think we do about something is in my opinion important and can help guide further learning decisions.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is tempting to say "everything", but acquiring knowledge takes time, so you need to prioritize. I would recommend the following areas: (note: the order does _not_ imply priority; I would rather recommend to do this in parallel, like get the most useful 20% of everything first and then go deeper)

* Keeping your body alive and healthy: what to eat, how to exercise properly, how to avoid diseases, how to avoid crime.

* Keeping your mind sane: how to think rationally, how to avoid mental traps (cults, scams, political mindkilling, superstition... i.e. various forms of manipulation and self-manipulation), what makes you happy and productive, how conditioning works.

* Gathering power: social skills, financial skills.

* Meta skills: how to acquire skills faster, prioritizing and managing your time...

And perhaps computer programming as a starting skill -- something that will nicely pay your bills until you become sufficiently great at the remaining skills.

</comment><comment><USER10> I feel like when people post on Ask HN, they should describe what they've already done to answer the question. Many posts seem like the height of laziness and the SN is terrible.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think once could benefit well from learning about mental models and cognitive biases. They affect how we think and make decisions.

</comment><comment><USER12> Learn how to learn. I think it'll be a great investment. If you can develop a framework for yourself that will help you learn quicker and more efficiently, you'll be able to add more stuff in your "knowledge" bag. How? I'd start by googling "learn how to learn".

</comment><comment><USER13> Chasing knowledge for its own sake, without a broader goal is ultimately useless. If it makes you feel good, go for it. If it makes you feel superior and "smarter" than others, you are just feeding your ego.

Knowledge is best used in service of a bigger goal. If you have no goal, work on that instead.

</comment><comment><USER14> History. Of the world, of your country, of your profession and other industries.

Things are the way they are because of how they used to be.

That context paints everything. The more you understand it, the better you will be able to work within it, and predict what will happen next.

</comment><comment><USER15> Beyond your profession, I think history can be interesting, provide perspective on current events, and contribute to a good conversation

</comment><comment><USER16> Learn about philosofy of life (like stoicism for example) . This is a very practical knowladge that will help you live a better and happier life. It might also help you find what next you wanna learn.

</comment><comment><USER17> Depends what you want to achieve with that knowledge.

What I do care about is things in direct persuit of goals I wish to achieve. I like building things, so naturally I graviate towards the following:

\- web & software development

\- math

\- computer science

This isn't to say I just learn those topics only. There are a number of other fields that do not directly correlate to those topics, but the insight you gain from it is beneficial. Things like music & music theory are a good example, which ties into math.

Whenever I think of what is "worth" knowing I like to think of the Valve New Employee Handbook. There's a diagram called "T-shaped" people based on Team Fortress 2

Its on page 47 here. [https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployee...](https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf)

Essentially, it states a person should have a large breath of knowledge of many topics, but should have a specific depth of few related topics. Because people naturally seek others with specializations, but you need to understand other perspectives other than your own.

In this same example, my model "T" based model on the shallow side looks like thusly. Each of these shallow concepts complement the other "core" skillsets as well

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\- Welding & Woodworking & 3D modeling - It helps to know how to build something with your own hands, there will come a time where you will need this. It makes you realize that sometimes the best solutions are just hardware-based, you don't need software

\- Understanding of how other industries work on a business-level, because the knowledge is applicable anywhere. I do business case studies almost everyday, industries include healthcare, nonprofit, education, restaurants, tech, startups, service-based companies, oil & gas, simulation based training, 3PL logistics, real estate, history, among many others. Knowing how other industries work gives you a wide variety of tools to work with, because many times solutions in one industry overlap with others.

\- Fixing things. I do my own plumbing and do my own car maintenance many times. It relates to software development by having you getting used to knowing how to work with other existing systems, and familiarzing yourself with technical documentation across many things include reading AWS docs etc

\- Cooking. Knowing how to cook properly highlights the importance of following directions properly before you mix up your own changes. You can't build that amazing recipe until you've made the base version, and done A/B testing for flavor enhancements. You can draw analogies to software A/B testing as well

\- Art. Knowing how to draw helps you highlight the importance of sticking to one convention. Much like coding, you don't want to change your styleguides down the road. You need to know what type of art you are making - is it building design using vanishing points, or something more freeform like a portrait design? Its all about setting requirements and executing skillfully

\- Playing Musical Instruments. Music is important in teaches you discipline. Unless you practice it everyday much like programming, you end up losing the ability to play it well. There's other analogies to draw here as well, related to math.

\- Fighting. I did Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai. Its all about perspective and quick analysis when fatigued. You learn how you perform in times or stress because your getting clocked in the face in a jab. You learn about paralysis analysis pretty quickly here, and learn about project management practices as a result

\- Video Games. I learned alot of things growing up here. What it taught me related to my main interest is how many different perspectives go in making a final product. There's storyboarding, art, design, QA testing, programming, and much more. Software development is more or less the same, storyboarding is userstories, art is UX, design is frontend, QA is unit testing/CI, programming is backend. It might not be 1:1 but you get the point

\- TV Shows / Animes / Fiction. You can learn a lot of life lessons here as well, assuming the plotline is realistic and believable. The military actually recommends the fiction novel "Enders Game" as part of its reading list for good reasons. [https://www.businessinsider.com/commandants-reading- list-201...](https://www.businessinsider.com/commandants-reading- list-2014-7#enders-game-by-orson-scott-card-4)

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There's many more fields you can draw analogies from. You gain wisdom learning many different fields, and have a larger "catalog" of things to pull from to know what is right and what is not.

Because you see so many things you'll just instantly know a lot of patterns. For instance, if you've tried hundreds of software packages, you'll know there is always a file menu bar uptop in every app. You'll know what the "window" pane for pane customization is usually always the 2nd to last option in many applications (adobe), and "help" is the last option here. The left pane is almost always some sort of folder tree structure pane for navigating on the larger scale. If its not its going to be a toolbar set instead.

If you learn adobe software suites, you'll know things like affinity designer , sketch, etc are all based on the same sort of UX layout, but different. Artboards will make sense, export personas, etc. If you learn one CAD package like CATIA,SolidWorks is simple to understand. The underlying logic is the same, and you realize its just applications of linear algebra.

Learning many fields makes learning other fields easier.

When you learn many fields you recognize the most important metrics that matter. You'll look at an item, and see many use cases that others don't see. A good example of this is an XBOX controller. You can buy a simulation military grade controller for 1000xs that price, or an XBOX controller for military controls. You can buy shelving, or buy cheaper shelving used at restaurants that do the same thing. You can make pasta and bread using a powerdrill with specialized attachments for 10xs less whatever it cost at stores. Because it runs the same type of motor. You can use a restaurant ticket rail as a paper holder. You can fix a coffee maker with inverter issues by turning on a blender because its windings increases inductance of the circuit the kitchen applies, filtering out higher frequencies used by a cheap inverter _pulled from a hackernews comment_.

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You start to see how some items can be used in multiple applications. These include things like magnets, zipties, 10 different types of tape _(industrial double side sticky tape, friction, gaffer, painters, magnetic washboard, ruler, duct, scotch, packing, note-colored tape)_ pinederby weights, cardboard, paracord, plastic bags etc. A good example is in First Robotics (e.g. students who compete in high school robotics), metal tape measurers are commonly used as a pole extension arm due to the fact you can use actuate it with just a gear pulley and still withstand its shape. You don't see items anymore as simply just what they are at face value, but rather by their functional properties (stick things together, store things) instead and meta data (weight, size, etc).

You start to see how some software has many types of applications. Another example is a macro app I use called phrase-express (similar to autohotkey / applescript). Its used to transcribe medical data entry correctly. But its used in so many other ways of automating, I use it to automatically write code snippets, screenshot things, text macros, etc. I use my bookmarking tool (pinboard) as a text backup of long posts I make, since it points to the right URL. I CTRL+A, CTRL+C to save documents via text-clip management tool called Ditto. I turn on captions on youtube videos all the time, so I can "speed- read" the video at 2 to 16xs playback speed, depending on content complexity and what I hope to get out of it.

You also realize that sometimes people use a piece of software for many unintended uses. In videogames, sometimes these bugs become features _super smash bros & iframes, street-fighter and block cancellation, speedrunning_. Another good example is the omnibar on the browser, that was not its intended use for using it as a google search. People will find to make things work for them as best they can. People will make full blown SaaS solutions with just excel, since that's all they know how to use.

You also realize the power of good formatting and storytelling. Mostly from reading too much terrible fiction from terrible authors, but occasionally finding some authors who make masterpieces. You take those ideas, and bring it to your own writing.

You start to realize who is and who is not worth following as well. You start to see who shares the same mindset as you, even if you've never met them. This could be tiny bits of metadata on someones github repo, all the way to just what they put on their blog. Many companies naturally use this as part of their cultural fit and hiring processes.

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As a result you are able to unique generate novel ideas that sometimes are better than anything you find off the shelf. Sometimes these ideas become plugins and extensions that many users use, othertimes it becomes a business that no one else has thought of that you end up doing instead. Because you already are familiar with so many things, you don't need to do any research. Competition is validation. You can filter out what is garbage advice and what is not. You've seen what works & what does not, its pure instinct now. You rely on your own set of experiences across many fields to make the assessments for you. You can instantly crowd source solutions to ideas on reddit, youtube, amazon etc, without ever asking anything, because its all there already. You learn when reinventing the wheel is a good thing and when its a bad thing.

Learning different fields is one of the fastest way to gain wisdom and experience to make better informed decisions

<comment><USER18> Well said, but of course it takes many years of learning to achieve this breadth of understanding - but completely worth it.

And I am still surprised by how many programmers also love woodwork.

<comment><USER17> It does take a long time and its an ongoing process everyday, but I find learning new things to be fun.

I don't do much woodwork right now _don 't have space for a woodshop_, but I really enjoy watching Matthias Wandels creations here. [https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel](https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Carnal.

And all the others, too.

</comment><comment><USER20> Biology / Nutrition / Fitness and the basic of medicine.

</comment><comment><USER7> IMHO only that knowledge which can be directly applied as a real world application.

<comment><USER21> Might you elucidate why you think so?

<comment><USER7> Because the ROI is tangible and corporeal.</comment></comment></comment>


Sprint tacks $10/month charge onto unlimited smartphone plans - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.sprint.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1771

<comment><USER2> I love the implicit dialog here between Sprint and their customers:

      Sprint: "Hey, give us $10 extra per month"
      Customer: "What do I get for it?"
      Sprint: "Nothing, just do it. Telephones are hard."</comment>


Slow Thought: a manifesto - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/take-your-time-the-seven-pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto <comment><USER2> Experienced writers know that "writing is re-writing". Maybe I'm just slower than others, but I'd like to transfer that to "thinking is re-thinking". However, as we know since Sokrates' example, the difficulty remains that by the time we're done, we might be late to the party.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would best describe it as playful thought, not as much slow thought. The philosophical response may be slow, but often because the mind plays with thought in its head before arriving at a response. Play is quite fast and meandering, as the author points out well.

</comment><comment><USER4> Vaguely related, but I liked this comic about not answering questions too quickly:

[http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the- park](http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park)

<comment><USER5> nice, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> if i am learning anything as a parent (and it's debatable) it's that my first reaction to my children's (mid)behaviour is usually unhelpful, and i should slow down and give myself time to process.

The slow movement (I seem to remember pushing for slow coding) is a good one, but for me aimed at ensuring the choice we make is the choice we would want to make.

it is very related to Daniel Kanniman (if i spelt that right)

<comment><USER7> > Daniel Kanniman (if i spelt that right)

A quick search could've told you it's Kahneman, still not slow enough...

edit: meant with a wink, not as a jab

<comment><USER6> Fairy Nuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Never underestimate a philosopher's ability to produce thousands of words from nothing more than staring into their own navel.

<comment><USER9> Not a bad way to arrive at slow thought, really.</comment></comment>


Humans Never Stopped Evolving (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/46651/title/Humans-Never-Stopped-Evolving/ <comment><USER2> I cannot even be bothered to read the article. _Of course_ we didn't stop evolving - how on earth could we?

If someone claimed to possess evidence that we _did_ stop, _that_ is a paper I should read with interest.

<comment><USER3> I think it is a popular misconception that human evolution is a thing of the past. One reason for that is maybe that evolution has been explained as a matter of premature deaths, more than of relative number of descendants. The idea is sometimes articulated as "there are no predators anymore, and medicine saves also those who would otherwise die of illness and accidents"\- but of course the opposite is probably true, the fact that we're pretty much all fed and cured is a major driver of evolution today. Another even more naive misconception about evolution is tied to the idea of "mutants", individuals possessing obvious and possibly extreme characteristics (and their notable absence as a proof of the missing evolution); while in fact evolution is mostly variation in the relative proportion of existing, very subtle differences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now eagerly awaiting:

"Humans Once Actually Thought They Stopped Evolving (2216)"

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, quite obviously unless you're genetically identical to your parents - you have "evolved". Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does it go on, though?

<comment><USER7> Maybe: There is this "disorder" called Marfan Syndrome where your limbs, fingers etc become longer than usual. And it seems to help with physical and Musical performance, e.g. Phelps is suspected of having it, Paganini had it, and guitar virtuoso Paul Gilbert (who I'm very envious of) also does. Now the question is, does superior athletic and musical performance lead to higher reproduction? Also, Marfan's is linked with a risk of heart disease, so this might hinder progress. It's definitely an experiment that evolution currently performs.

<comment><USER8> Marfan Syndrome takes away much more than it gives. I think it's an evolutionary advantage NOT to have it. It's a real disease.

<comment><USER9> The rules of evolution for humans have changed,ie, we are aware of it.

Erstwhile successful mating traits have chiefly been replaced by financial and social status.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yelp cancels internship program due to Covid-19 outbreak - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/18/yelp-cancels-internship-program-due-to-covid-19-outbreak/ <comment><USER2> This is terrible timing for the class of 2020 and 2021. Classes are online or canceled, many are paying rent on apartments they aren't living in (staying with parents after spring break), losing income from their university town/campus jobs since campuses are shutdown, and many companies are on hiring freezes while things shake out.

I know internships were the difference between me taking out loans and graduating debt free. I also converted my last internship into a full-time offer. I feel for anyone directly affected by this.

I wonder if 5 years from now we'll see the classes of '20 and '21 significantly hindered in their workforce progression and pay as was seen of the 2008 era?

<comment><USER3> But isn't Yelp that company that extorts businesses into buying their advertising and punishes them with bad reviews if they don't? Any student would might have contributed to that racket deserves to miss out.

<comment><USER4> [https://www.yelp.com/extortion](https://www.yelp.com/extortion)

Lot of misinformation out there.

<comment><USER5> If Yelp really did it, a page on Yelp's website wouldn't be a credible source.

<comment><USER6> FWIW Yelp's page specifically says "but don't just take our word for it" and links to independent reporting: [http://www.buzzfeed.com/sandraeallen/is-yelp- evil-or-just-mi...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/sandraeallen/is-yelp-evil-or-just- misunderstood)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this thing is causing me a lot of anxiety lately. i finally landed a FB summer internship in menlo park and now i can't tell if it'll actually happen. recruiter is saying everything is still on track but i'm sure there's no way they can predict whether that'll change soon.

i know google is doing virtual onboarding and wfh for incoming interns according to the whether the team that hosts is still game. does anyone have any idea about FB?

<comment><USER8> Yelp is very much tied to the Restaurant industry. It may be an outlier with respect to this pandemic. Of all the tech dominos to fall, Yelp and Groupon (trading around 50 cents today) sound like the first to be hit.

<comment><USER7> i'm sure FB isn't going to fail but i am wondering if it logistically won't be possible. i mean menlo park is under shelter-in-place and if you asked me a couple of weeks ago i would not have imagined an intern class could be productive on WFH.

<comment><USER9> Shelter in place is until april 7. They can maybe extend it a little longer but not by much because otherwise half of people end up being exempt due to homelessness

<comment><USER10> I highly doubt the shelter-in-place order will be lifted before mid-May.

<comment><USER9> I kid ofc what's actually going to happen is

a. Everyone will start ignoring it

b. Actual bread riots

c. All of the above

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a kneejerk reaction from Yelp that will hurt their hiring efforts in the future as they cease to be a reliable option for good candidates. It would not have been difficult for them to ask the interns to work remotely, maybe even reduce stipends if they're hurting for cash. But canceling internships at this point deeply hurts these candidates' prospects. Anyone job hunting and in a position to pick and choose should withdraw their job applications from Yelp and let them know why.

<comment><USER12> The businesses that make up Yelp's customer base are crumbling by the day. They're a "help you find restaurants and bars" app in a time when governments are either telling their citizens to not go to restaurants and bars, or just straight up forcibly closing them. I don't see how you can call this a kneejerk reaction, like _at all_. A virus caused recession is the world thing that could have happened to Yelp economy wise. Withdraw applications and let them know why? Lol. They aren't going to notice. Those applications aren't happening. If people with applications haven't been told that yet it's only because HR is either too busy getting the mass layoffs in order or job hunting themselves.</comment></comment>


Can a Machine Learn to Write for the New Yorker? - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/can-a-machine-learn-to-write-for-the-new-yorker <comment><USER2> > In the event, I'd been able to persuade GPT-2 to express the thoughts that I > wanted it to express, although I didn't feel any more confident in my own > knowledge of language or my own prowess at predicting what it might say. > After a few minutes, I went on to the next page of GPT-2's work, and the > computer revealed a series of explanations about why words used in "Atlas > Shrugged" had apparently been chosen. "Liking is true universal," the > machine said. "It applies to all individuals." "Everybody is drawn to > success," it said. "Not only do they do what they want, but, to the extent > that they are successful, they also help others." The most interesting part > of the text, however, was the last line: "You don't have to like it. But you > should care."

I like how in this generated piece, the model writes as the author, and quoting the model itself has some form of a reflective second-person view of itself. Quite hilarious and hella' sci-fi.

</comment><comment><USER3> The generated text is a little too on the nose and sure enough:

> In each case, we generated more than one response and selected the predicted > text that follows each section in the article.

Good article even so.

<comment><USER4> Agree, I was blown away by the quality of the generated text until realizing that it was simply too good to be true. The fact that they picked and chose makes for a way less impressive demo. Good piece though.

<comment><USER5> But on the other hand, 'picking and choosing' can be automated in many ways (eg A/B testing), and in a very real sense, that's what the last research OA released on GPT-2 is about: [https://openai.com/blog/fine-tuning- gpt-2/](https://openai.com/blog/fine-tuning-gpt-2/) (Because the human preferences are used to train a critic which then 'picks and chooses' by ranking output by quality to further train the text generator.)

<comment><USER5> I have been experimenting with the preference-learning code for writing poetry, and it does seem to work: I've already noticed improvements in the generated poetry in increasing the amounts of rhymes, avoiding undesirable text genres like Greek/Latin/Spanish/English-prose, and decreasing the amount of repetition. (One of the most irritating and longstanding failure modes in neural text generation is that it often degenerates into repeating the same phrase many times, so it's pleasing to see that penalizing this in ratings _does_ seem to then cause the generator to learn to avoid it.) Unfortunately, model-free RL training using PPO is extremely slow. Fortunately, I can't see any reason that it _has_ to be PPO or model-free RL at all, since the reward model ought to be fully differentiable and allow calculation of true gradients / model-based RL, so OOM speedups ought to be possible quite easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Unlike writing, speech doesn't require multiple drafts before it "works." > Uncertainty, anxiety, dread, and mental fatigue all attend writing; talking, > on the other hand, is easy, often pleasant, and feels mostly unconscious.

While I like the article, this distinction feels overly anecdotal and subjective to me.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Most people would sound quite stupid if their speech were to be transcribed as-is. I feel that It's _not_ that we are more skilled speakers than writers, but more so that we hold writing to a higher standard in general.

<comment><USER8> Adding to this: it's not just the textual content. Speech almost always carries an additional layer of information, imprinted by who or whatever spoke the words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Judging by the quality of writing on web portals in my country this has already happened (although it is possible that most of those articles are just machine translations of pieces from UK/US websites)

</comment><comment><USER10> "Along with almost everyone else who texts or tweets, with the possible exception of the President of the United States, I have long relied on spell- checkers and auto-correctors"

This exactly spells out a question I have. How would the New Yorker make sure it's AI author puts the correct amount of Left-snark on what it writes? How would Fox news tune theirs to Right-snark?

<comment><USER11> Seems more like objective-snark instead of left-snark to me...</comment></comment>


Airbus patents aircraft cabins shaped like doughnuts - <AUTHOR> http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=2014319274A1&KC=A1&FT=D&ND=3&date=20141030&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting from the FT [1]:

 _Airbus said although the design was worthwhile enough to protect with a patent — like about 6,000 other ideas its engineers devise every year — it was not an immediate prospect for shuttling passengers from Heathrow to JFK. "This is not something that's currently under active development," Airbus said._

[1] [http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba80c518-6492-11e4-b219-00144...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba80c518-6492-11e4-b219-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fhome_uk%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct#axzz3JGVAqlXi)

<comment><USER3> Make patents 100x more expensive and see if they still think that.

<comment><USER4> it will create a market where only the rich can get patents - precisely the opposite of what I presume you hope to achieve.

<comment><USER5> Keep patent costs the same, but reduce their lifetime to 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I imagine it'd be uncomfortable to be seated at an angle askew to the takeoff/landing vector.

<comment><USER7> This, if you've ever ridden in the jump seats of a jet and felt your head and guts go sideways during climb out it is very disconcerting. You know that feeling that the jet it tilting way up when your sitting forward? You get the tilt is really sideways when you are sitting sideways. I expect you get used to it but it no doubt makes those seats hard to sell.

<comment><USER8> The seats of a plane are never sold uniform price, I guess except on southwest.

I'd take the side seats to save money, and others would as well. I also sit behind the engine when it's cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My bet is that airplanes will look just the same in 2070 as they did in 1970...

<comment> k-mcgrady The only thing that needs to change imo is space. If you got an extra ft width on the seat and an extra 2-3 ft between each row the increase in comfort would significantly improve the experience. I'm not a big guy or a very tall guy (6ft1in) but space is my one complaint about air travel. I can deal with all the other BS but being uncomfortable with practically no way of improving it when on a flight longer than a couple of hours is so frustrating.

Edit: Obviously this is from the perspective of a passenger. Planes could become more energy efficient, faster etc. etc.

<comment><USER10> It exists: first and business class.

In fact, domestic first class fares in the US have been really cheap lately, often just a $100-200 premium over coach.

<comment><USER11> Only? That's a lot of cash, man. At least for me it is. And that "only" is a 25-50% premium.

That's another night in a hotel, or slightly nicer meals, or an extra drink, or...

I wish I could flippantly toss around a few hundred bucks without a second thought. One day, maybe.

<comment><USER12> If they offered the same space for economy seats, the prices would be higher. This way you can make the judgement for yourself.

<comment><USER11> Seriously?

I had plenty of space before about a decade of whittling away space in coach without whittling away at the price (plus removing meals, adding bag fees, and so on).

I've had a choice for decades. Coach used to be a half-way pleasant one. Now it's steerage, and the passengers treated as such.

Well, most airlines. I'm partial to Southwest, for a number of reasons - <USER2> being I don't have to sit with my legs spread to accommodate the seat in front of me (6' tall).

<comment><USER12> I wonder how much rising fuel prices have balanced that reduction in services.

I am taller than you and struggle for leg room on any airline. I just deal with it and spend the money saved missing premium classes on other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any aeronautical engineers around who could give us the TL;DR of just why it's a good idea to have a hole in the middle? To a layman (me) it would seem seriously destabilizing to have a hole that's perpendicular to the direction of flight, esp. since a delta wing seems to pull off more or less the same shape without the hole.

<comment><USER14> Initially I thought the "hole" was meant to be enclosed within the airframe, but it is there. See Fig 2 - Fig 8 in the patent application. They have even diagrammed a method for boarding passengers using retractable escalators from parallel hatches located on the forward and aft planes of the inner-torus, as well as using an elevator to board passengers from within the hole! Fig 9 - Fig 16 diagram the invention applied to a more conventional airframe (without the hole).

The patent title is "aircraft including a passenger cabin extending around a space defined outside the cabin and inside the aircraft." My understanding is that the patent covers the torus-shaped passenger cabin within any larger aerodynamic envelope as a method of reducing constraints related to cabin pressurization (the "hole" is incidental). Very interesting stuff. I'm not an aeronautical engineer or patent attorney.

<comment><USER15> Paragraph 0030 says that figure 2 is without the aerodynamic envelope. The aerodynamic envelope is labeled 22, and visible in figure 7. Other parts of the description mention how the hole can be filled with cargo or other items, and that a non-pressure skin can be used as a cover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Neat idea. Minor correction: This is a published patent application, not a patent. According to USPTO records, it published last month, but examination has not begun.

</comment><comment><USER17> > AIRCRAFT INCLUDING A PASSENGER CABIN EXTENDING AROUND A SPACE DEFINED > OUTSIDE THE CABIN AND INSIDE THE AIRCRAFT

So then they're not deck chairs on top of the plane? I'm not much up on plane design, but where exactly is "outside the cabin, but inside the aircraft" ?

<comment><USER13> Read the friendly headline: it's a doughnut-shaped plane, meaning there's a hole ("outside the cabin") in the middle ("inside the aircraft").

<comment><USER17> I get it, it's just worded in a really strange way.

<comment><USER13> On closer inspection, it looks like it's not an actual hole, but merely unpressurized space: in the fuselage, but not in the (pressurized) cabin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Will there be windows in the doughnut hole?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like 2 exit doors.

On that note, how would this affect the all important question of how to most efficiently board an aircraft?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only one here wondering why the layout of an airplane interior be something patentable?

<comment><USER20> It should not be patentable, but, unfortunately, the bar is very low at the moment.

<comment><USER21> The silly aircraft engineers and their obvious physics. /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Spaceplane?

This doughnut creates a neat lifting body design.

</comment><comment><USER23> Airbus. That makes a lot more sense. I initially read that as Airbnb.

<comment><USER24> Me too haha, insufficient coffee -.-</comment></comment>


Manned Orbiting Laboratory - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Orbiting_Laboratory <comment><USER2> Joined to say that my father, now deceased, worked on this project. He didn't talk about it until years later, when he saw documentaries on TV with project managers or other leadership discussing MOL. Guess he thought it was ok to talk about it if they were, but he was very angry at the time that they'd broken their secrecy vows.

He said some of the tech ended up in the space shuttle, so it wasn't a complete waste.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just a personal memory... Years ago, I worked on a job out at Mojave flight test area. One of the F-4 pilots was a man named Dick Lawyer. I got to know him a little bit, the job was completed, and I moved on. Years later I heard that he died. It was then that I read about his participation in the MOL program. I was floored. He never, ever talked about it or had any hint of it in his office. Cool guy with a good sense of humor. I would have loved to talk to him about MOL in detail.

</comment><comment><USER4> Obligatory link to Vintage Space video on MOL... [https://youtu.be/5ffYSfkP3d8](https://youtu.be/5ffYSfkP3d8)

A very cool channel in general for y'all space race geeks out there :)

<comment><USER2> Very cool! But she calls it "M-O-L" the correct pronounciation is "MOLE"</comment></comment>