The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief <comment><USER2> I find it odd that people make such a big deal about the failed "mind control" programs, while ignoring the ones that were disturbingly successful: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Rodr%C3%ADgue...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Manuel_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Delgado)

<comment><USER3> Interesting, wonder if we could modulate the electric grid and influence the emotions of a nation?

<comment><USER4> yes and more. There are a large number of routers that are designed to revert to a backup copy of firmware and configuration.

      An attack would involve making electrical service cycle its voltage 3 times in succession,
     thus causing reversion to a default mode. The majority of routers would be in Out of the Box State, and highly pwnable.

It is very conveinient that 3phase power can provide 3 surges of ~60vac if the correct attack is used on a generation station, or inter-tie station.

if you are of the 3rd party firmware persuasion, you should flash your router configure, and then flash again, so your backup will be a secure firmware with a secure configuration.

Among the things router manufacturers should do is change this aforementioned behaviour to something like 5 failed reboot attempts in succession, rather than 3 reboot attempts.

<comment><USER5> Where could I read more on that firmware reversion hack? I searched what was quoted, but it only ties back to your post.

<comment><USER6> rolph's reply to this seems a bit... off the rails.

This part makes me think it's all a big conspiracy theory:

> such a router will have two instances of flashed firmware and you can toggle > between the instances by flicking the power switch [3times] rapidly so you > produce 3 boot failures. this is true in the case of linksys routers and > many others but not all, so read often, implement successfully the first > time.

I recently purchased a high-end Linksys router and flashed OpenWRT on it so I know exactly what he's talking about. Like modern smartphones, they have two firmware partitions, A and B. When you are booted into the A partition and download an update, it is applied to the B partition. On the next boot the device uses the B partition and then eventually applies the same update to the A partition. This means that updates can be applied without having to restart the device and wait a long time for the flash, and it also means that the device can revert to the A partition if there was an error updating the B partition. That's why it was added a few years ago to Android.

This is explicitly advertised as in the marketing for newer high-end routers (and other things, like computer motherboards).

In OpenWRT you actually have to manually flash both partitions - update the router, reboot into the other partition, and then update again to apply it to the first partition. Which seems to be what rolph is talking about when he mentions flashing updates twice to be a deterrent to this exploit. What doesn't make sense is that rolph implied that the fix of flashing twice applied to all devices.

\- On devices with dual firmwares, the stock firmware flashes updates twice to complete the update process \- On devices with one firmware but a secret evil firmware, the evil firmware will not be affected by updates, so flashing a new firmware twice will not fix the exploit (which is the opposite of what rolph said)

I would assume high-end older routers do contain a backup stock firmware that can be loaded after multiple failed boots, just like Windows will boot to recovery mode if it fails to boot a few times.

rolph hasn't provided any solid evidence to back his conspiracy theory. That doesn't mean it isn't... as you can see in the comments here, there's tons of stuff we don't know about. Also see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17311005](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17311005) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5981399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5981399)

So it might actually be an evil CIA/NSA plot. Or it might not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is weird. I can hardly imagine how can LSD be used to control somebody rather than to free him. Every single time I've taken LSD (or other psychedelics) it felt great. The first time I have taken it I've also experienced sense of beauty and love so deep and extatic I could not previously imagine, another sense I've experienced deeply was how absurd violence, as well as pride and hatred are. It also helped me to realize non- duality and mindfulness so now I fear neither death nor imprisionment, let alone ridiculous verbal manipulations. Nevertheless I haven't became a hippie, I still maintain my hygiene and do my job.

It is also a well-known fact LSD doesn't work the next day you take it and you have to rest for about a weak before you can repeat the trip (but, to be honest, I am to mention I haven't checked this myself).

<comment><USER8> >Every single time I've taken LSD (or other psychedelics) it felt great.

I'm glad you've had a good experiences with LSD every time you've taken it. But even a simple look into the history and culture of LSD and you would know that very "bad" trips are possible. I'm shocked that you haven't done more research into LSD as a whole.

>It is also a well-known fact LSD doesn't work the next day you take it and you have to rest for about a weak before you can repeat the trip (but, to be honest, I am to mention I haven't checked this myself).

Your assertion of "a well-known fact" is in fact false. I'm glad you put the last part in parentheses.

It sounds like you are prime for some reading on the history of LSD & psychedelics, understanding the effects long & short term, understanding how the drug(s) works, and how there were attempts to weaponize it (of course there were).

Apologies if the tone of this comment is a bit down on you, it's not meant to be, I just _really_ hope you educate yourself before speaking again on this subject.

<comment><USER7> > I'm glad you've had a good experiences with LSD every time you've taken it. > But even a simple look into the history and culture of LSD and you would > know that very "bad" trips are possible. I'm shocked that you haven't done > more research into LSD as a whole.

So you are essentially shocked with your own assumption. I've never mentioned I don't know about the "bad trips" theory (although I can only speculate about how does it feel and why can it happen as long as we are talking about LSD, I have only met one person who had a bad trip experience and it was with n,n-DMT).

I also know enough about how does it work on the brain chemistry level.

As for the military usage and related history - I'm not interested enough to invest more time than it takes to write a comment expressing my surprise and my experience so others could share the essential parts in response if they feel like they want to.

<comment><USER8> >So you are essentially shocked with your own assumption.

What assumption? The assumption that you haven't done more research into psychedelics? LOL. Yep. Cool story bro.

>As for the military usage and related history - I'm not interested enough to invest more time

Yeah... so you just don't do research. Idk why you didn't just admin that in the first place.

Tbh I love your comment, I really do. The amount of ignorance you spew is a good show. _Grabs popcorn_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Only tangentially related since the following is not about "mind control" but about "psychological control". Seems like in 2007 CIA was still interested in that.

This is an extract from the section "Special Handling" in [1]:

#+BEGIN_QUOTE A well-trained espionage recruiter will search for vulnerable targets. Professional intelligence officers are trained to "spot" outward signs of trouble in a person's history or behavior -- such as tumultuous relationships or frequent job changes -- and to evaluate the deeper, more enduring psychological dysfunctions that may be at the root of the problems. These professional recruiters are trained do deploy sophisticated psychological control techniques matched to the vulnerabilities they have detected in order to manipulate, apply pressure, or induce a person to commit espionage.

Some intelligence services do not limit themselves to exploiting pre-existing problems, but may actively foster crises to enhance the target's susceptibility to recruitment. Common forms of such aggressive pursuit and manipulation of targets include emotional or sexual entrapment and financial manipulation through increasing the target's level of debt. A psychologically vulnerable target's grandiosity, sense of being above the rules, or vengeful impulses can all be manipulated in the service of recruitment. #+END_QUOTE

What I found interesting was that the same terminology ("psychological control", "handler") was used also by stratfor's Friedman in the stratfor leaks [2].

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001407031....](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0001407031.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3QAe64n0JhVjmMuutjXvLPVlZJ_MGS_kK8iFFxZLhOKmM0HWlWuU9xmxs)

[2] [https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=202526&fbc...](https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=202526&fbclid=IwAR2_vz-3g4foV3eO1DWhYTJ5Z8ZsF6aLXnQbkgUMAWYaJOxFYIeuGNV9ckg)

</comment><comment><USER10> Admittedly unrelated but... I love that this link has a "decline tracking cookies and just give me plain text version of the site"

<comment><USER11> It doesn't look like this is an option for American readers, unfortunately :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interview with Stephen Kinzer (On Ripple Effect Podcast)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-Z77BhI1c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-Z77BhI1c)

</comment><comment><USER13> Never understood they experimented with LSD, I would have though to unpredictable, something like scopolamine would have had better effects. It is often used in South America to control their victims as if all there free will is gone. It is highly effective in small doses (not LSD small but still quite small), the victim is often taking to the ATM and told to take out the money which they do willingly.

Never tried it myself, but the wife had it used on her when a student, luckily she had only about $15 in her bank account at the time, but says it is like being in a dazed / dream like state where you just go through the motions

<comment><USER14> They experimented with a wide array of drugs, including LSD, fish poison, and Scopolamine. At first, the CIA was predominantly concerned with (aerosol) weaponization and investigating if dosing an unwitting agent, diplomat, or soldier with LSD could be used to extract secrets. Later they became interested in the counter culture of the 60s (and making sure the Russians were not turning a new generation against its own society/military).

[https://fightingmonarch.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/human- dr...](https://fightingmonarch.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/human-drug-testing- by-the-cia-1977.pdf)

> Among the drugs illegally used by CIA against American citizens are (a) > hypnotic sedatives such as amobarbital, aprobarbital, butabarbital sodium, > chloral hydrate, methotrimeprazine hydrochloride, midazolam hydrochloride, > paraldehyde, pentobarbital, pentobarbital sodium, quazepam, secobarbital > sodium, sodium pentobarbital, temazepam, triazolam, and zolpidem tartrate, > (b) hypnotics like demerol, desoxyn (combined with sodium pentothal), > methyprylon, and pentothal acid, and (c) memory blockers such as > acetylcholine, BZ, and _scopolamine_.

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US4858612A/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US4858612A/en)

> A method and apparatus for simulation of hearing in mammals by introduction > of a plurality of microwaves into the region of the auditory cortex is shown > and described. A microphone is used to transform sound signals into > electrical signals which are in turn analyzed and processed to provide > controls for generating a plurality of microwave signals at different > frequencies. The multifrequency microwaves are then applied to the brain in > the region of the auditory cortex. By this method sounds are perceived by > the mammal which are representative of the original sound received by the > microphone.

[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intellig...](https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of- intelligence/kent-csi/vol5no2/html/v05i2a09p_0001.htm)

> Only a handful of cases in which scopolamine was used for police > interrogation came to public notice, though there is evidence suggesting > that some police forces may have used it extensively. 2, 16 One police > writer claims that the threat of scopolamine interrogation has been > effective in extracting confessions from criminal suspects, who are told > they will first be rendered unconscious by chloral hydrate placed covertly > in their coffee or drinking water.

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

> The United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) experimented with the > use of mescaline, scopolamine, and marijuana as possible truth drugs during > World War II. They concluded that the effects were not much different from > those of alcohol: subjects became more talkative but that did not mean they > were more truthful. Like hypnosis, there were also issues of suggestibility > and interviewer influence. Cases involving scopolamine resulted in a mixture > of testimonies both for and against those suspected, at times directly > contradicting each other.

<comment><USER15> Did any of them actually work?

<comment><USER14> I don't know, but those in the know are still (allegedly) using them.

> PRISONERS INSIDE THE U.S. military's detention center at Guantanamo Bay were > forcibly given "mind altering drugs," including being injected with a > powerful anti-psychotic sedative used in psychiatric hospitals. Prisoners > were often not told what medications they received, and were tricked into > believing routine flu shots were truth serums. It's a serious violation of > medical ethics, made worse by the fact that the military continued to > interrogate prisoners while they were doped on psychoactive chemicals.

> BZ was invented by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Hoffman-LaRoche in > 1951.[5] The company was investigating anti-spasmodic agents, similar to > tropine, for treating gastrointestinal ailments when the chemical was > discovered.[5] It was then investigated for possible use in ulcer treatment, > but was found unsuitable. At this time the United States military > investigated it along with a wide range of possible nonlethal, psychoactive > incapacitating agents including psychedelic drugs such as LSD and THC, > dissociative drugs such as ketamine and phencyclidine, potent opioids such > as fentanyl, as well as several glycolate anticholinergics.[6][7] > By 1959, > the United States Army showed significant interest in deploying it as a > chemical warfare agent.[5] It was originally designated "TK", but when it > was standardized by the Army in 1961, it received the NATO code name > "BZ".[5] The agent commonly became known as "Buzz" because of this > abbreviation and the effects it had on the mental state of the human > volunteers intoxicated with it in research studies at Edgewood Arsenal in > Maryland.[5]

> As described in retired Army psychiatrist James Ketchum's autobiographical > book Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten (2006), work proceeded in > 1964 when a general envisioned a scheme to incapacitate an entire trawler > with aerosolized BZ; this effort was dubbed Project DORK.[8] BZ was > ultimately weaponized for delivery in the M44 generator cluster and the M43 > cluster bomb, until all such stocks were destroyed in 1989 as part of a > general downsizing of the US chemical warfare program.

> The U.S. Army tested BZ as well as other "psycho-chemical" agents on human > subjects at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland from 1955 to 1975, according to > declassified documents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone." - Alexander Acosta

Who cares what the CIA did 60 years ago? Why isn't NPR reporting on what they may be doing now?

<comment><USER9> Because finding out that the research on "mind control" continued would be a big scandal, and in the past journalists like Gary Webb and Michael Hastings, who uncovered scandals about the CIA, did not to end well. Probably the CIA didn't kill them, but I'm convinced it contributed to mess up their life enough to disrupt their work. Intelligence agencies around the world consider themselves, rightfully or not, guardians of national interests. If a journalist works to uncover stories that could damage them, she/he may be end up being considered a threat not only to the agency, but also to national interests and that would put she/he at risk. Since there are not enough structures in place to let unjust behaviors on the part of intelligence to be scrutinized, researching on such things is not something I would do without also expecting ill-fated consequences.

<comment><USER17> > Probably the CIA didn't kill them

Wasn't Gary Webb found with two bullets in his head? Sure, it's possible that he fired those himself. But it's still highly suspicious IMO.

<comment><USER3> How would he fire the second bullet?

<comment><USER4> it is also possible for a firearm to doublefire. its most common with un maintained semi auto pistols, but can happen easily enough with large calibre revolvers, due to the recoil.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't have to be unmaintained. A 1911 pistol can be made to bump fire pretty easily, especially if you have it in a weird position. While it really isn't impossible, if you take kind of a Bayesian view, the likelihood that it was mis-attributed murder probably goes up considerably once you restrict yourself to the subset of double gunshot suicides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Netflix show Stranger Things was loosely based on this. It was originally going to be called "Montauk" and take place on Long Island, as there were conspiracies of mind control, time travel, and other experiments going on at Montauk Air Force base.

</comment><comment><USER20> > Whitey Bulger was one of the prisoners who volunteered for what he was told > was an experiment aimed at finding a cure for schizophrenia. As part of this > experiment, he was given LSD every day for more than a year. He later > realized that this had nothing to do with schizophrenia and he was a guinea > pig in a government experiment aimed at seeing what people's long-term > reactions to LSD was. Essentially, could we make a person lose his mind by > feeding him LSD every day over such a long period?

Can a mind be destroyed but continue to have self-awareness to realize it was being treated as a guinea pig? Does the experiment proved it was all BS?

</comment><comment><USER21> Former CIA mind control projects:

Ted Kaczyinski

Charles Manson

</comment><comment><USER22> It's grim, what will happen to the ones who thought they had this all locked- up.

The use of otherwise forbidden topics is especially poignant. The secrets of ancient techniques are inadmissible practically everywhere, thanks to the disturbing involvement of so many sworn oaths against their best interests.

As a recipient of their methodology, I can say there's sadly no good results for them in the near future, since what they've been doing produces counter- effects which will both expose, identify them and their various exchanges, records, and put them under the exact same circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER23> re same book and topics, some different details pulled out: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/06/from-mind- co...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/06/from-mind-control-to- murder-how-a-deadly-fall-revealed-the-cias-darkest-secrets)

</comment><comment><USER24> There's a book called Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control by Dominic Streatfeild that goes into this topic well if people are interested.

(And by well I mean takes a fairly sceptical view that they ever really got anywhere, and generally makes the case that the CIA ended up so desperate to counter perceived Russian abilities that they really stopped asking if any of the people they were hiring in this area were either total con-men or just completely nuts.)

</comment><comment><USER25> on the NPR site, it offers me text only version, but then the relevant article is not in the short displayed list of articles.

does anyone know the "sId" code?

an example URL of the text only site:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=759523615](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=759523615)

<comment><USER26> [https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=758989641](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=758989641)

<comment><USER25> may I enquire what steps you took to procure this link?

<comment><USER20> It's right after the date on the URL

<comment><USER25> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why would the government take any of these woo topics so seriously? Is there some kind of factual basis they are using, something concrete that would suggest there is merit? I'm doubtful it's based on complete conjecture and wishful thinking, but maybe you give people enough money and enough leeway and they'll just research oddball stuff.

<comment><USER27> By "woo" topic you mean "mind control"?

I like to do a thought experiment. If mind control is possible, will the CIA want to use it? If the CIA uses mind control, will they tell you about it? If they say that the program was a failure and was shut down, are they telling the truth?

I recommend taking a look into a thing called "trauma-based mind control". It may alter your way of thinking. Or it may not.

<comment><USER3> Well, there is certainly is a kind of mind control used by many ideologies. So, ideology based mind control certainly happens. Also, hypnotic mind control is possible to some degree. I guess it depends on what is meant by mind control, because some forms are very common and not at all controversial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "During the early period of the Cold War, the CIA became convinced that communists had discovered a drug or technique that would allow them to control human minds. "

When I read it I actually tried to imagine how it was to live back then and to act based on rumors. It was a crazy time to be a secret agent that's for sure

<comment><USER29> The US just finished a multi-year investigation into rumors fueled by a dossier created with rumors. People don't change, just the people involved.

<comment><USER30> this is an interesting way of looking at things -- to compare the potential discovery of mind control to the investigation of a long time grifter. Your phrasing almost makes it seem as if there is just as much truth to each "rumour".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's nothing in that article that we didn't already know. It seems like this is only getting attention now because someone wrote a book.

Is there some new revelation in this book that makes it worth reading?

<comment> en-us [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

<comment><USER31> I'm not making fun of anyone. I'm interested in what's new in this book. MKULTRA is old news. Surely there must be something new in this book that previous books haven't covered. What is it?

<comment><USER32> I don't think many people know the full extent of the MKULTRA programs, especially the attempts at mind control, brainwashing, dosing people with psychedelics unknowningly, extensive torture with drugs, experimentation on prisoners and stuff. Some of it approaches the Nazi experiments in just the sheer immorality of it all.

<comment><USER33> I agree no one knows "the full extent", and I do not think we ever will. A lot of information is out there though - available as far back as the late 80s. A lot of this came out when Harold Blauer's [0] sued the U.S. government [1] for testing drugs on him without anyone's consent when he was institutionalized for depression. The drug tests were covered up for 22 years...

I'm happy to see some headlines to hopefully inform some more folks, but you really have to go digging for this stuff intentionally to get to juicy details. If you are interested in doing so, I recommend picking up Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA".

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Blauer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Blauer) [1] [https://apnews.com/2e5220ecb195844edacfbffdb0a37a5a](https://apnews.com/2e5220ecb195844edacfbffdb0a37a5a)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Did they research news media and social media?

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting that the CIA imported LSD. I thought they were just Cocaine Importing Agency. I guess we can expect anything from Criminals In Action.

<comment><USER35> > I thought they were just Cocaine Importing Agency.

No not at all--[1] Viet Nam was all about protecting the Opium Poppy... kinda like "we" do in Afghanistan now.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> people still think this is news?

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm sure most people in power weren't taking this research seriously even 60 years ago, when it was running.

<comment><USER38> The criminals doing it took it serious, the atrocities were real and the list of victims whos lives they ruined is rather long. Once people hear MK ULTRA they think about staring at goats and LSD but the darker story behind it is the research on sensory deprivation, on torture to break involuntary subjects more reliably. From the school of Americas to Guantanamo to by now most regimes across the world, they all have to thank those "pioneers" of modern torture. The Canadian Dr Cameron who got the funding for his work on psychic driving through MKUltra isnt mentioned in the article but his work on the subject cant be described as anything but monstrous.

edit: "A Question of Torture" by Alfred W. McCoy is a good book on the subject.

<comment><USER32> That's correct. The CIA have actually learned the best form of torture is psychological torture and mastered that.</comment></comment></comment>


Google ends the year with a $94m investment in solar power in California - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/google-ends-2011-with-94-million-solar-power-investment.html

<comment><USER2> Given Eric Schmidt's comment on Google acquiring a company every week ( at le web IIRC), I'd say there still may be a few tricks up GOOG's sleeve before the year ends : )

<comment><USER3> My thoughts exactly.

I was also impressed that Google could end the year on 12/20! I knew Google had power, but to drop off 3% of the year... that's impressive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that they are still doing this since the news lately has been that Larry is cleaning house and getting rid of non-core businesses (not including the longshot type projects such as the driverless cars)

</comment><comment><USER5> >> we'll need both governments and private financiers to invest a lot of money

Setup the right incentives and the private financiers will come.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this a drop in the (tax write-off) bucket for them?</comment>


The key to building an idea seems to be blind faith - <AUTHOR> https://nextcept.com/Article/Details/1 <comment><USER2> I think this premise is reinforced by pg in several of his essays, so it's weird to see such push-back here on HN. Blind faith seems to be, by and large, necessary, especially when fighting against colossal odds (as is often the case in startups).

This kind of "insanity" is the precursor to the relentless determination one needs when leading a scrappy team of underdogs. Pragmatism and level- headedness sound good on paper, but borderline irresponsible risk-taking is what, at the end of the day, gets rewarded. There's no way to convince anyone -- potential employees, co-founders, investors -- without a cult-like aura. If you'll allow me some hyperbolic flair, startup founders are prophets.

<comment><USER3> Is it possible that the attitude expressed in those essays stems from what is good for founders in the aggregate — that is, pg's pocketbook — rather than what is good for any one particular founder?

<comment><USER4> I think there may be another way to look at it (even though I'm not actually a massive fan of the way VC works). The "if you don't play, you can't win" argument is a fool's errand if your chances of winning are miniscule. However, _if you 've already decided to play_ you're going to need an attitude that ignores your tiny chances of success -- otherwise you are likely to get disheartened and quit.

<comment><USER3> That's a reasonable interpretation. If you play, you probably won't win — but if you're going to play, give it all you've got.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The key to building an idea seems to be blind faith._

Blind faith is a bad idea. You want to start with an idea and become its biggest enemy for a few weeks. You need to attack it from all angles, talk to potential customers and try to find reasons why it would not work and why you wouldn't want to spend the next 5-10 years of your life building it. If after several weeks you still cannot prove that you have a bad idea then congratulations you have a good idea candidate.

Luck is still going to play a big role in your success but at-least you have a sound starting point.

<comment><USER6> Aren't most of Elon Musks projects examples of blind f faith? Who would have agreed that starting a new auto manufacturer based solely on electric vehicles was a good idea? A new rocket company? Going up against some of the biggest most established companies with probably the "old boy network" working to prevent entry of newcomers. Seems like blind faith to me.

<comment><USER5> Being aspirational does not imply lack of homework on Elon Musk's part. In fact I would respect Elon Musk a lot less if he did not do his due diligence before starting to work on all of his companies. Faith is tested deeply during most entrepreneurial journeys, which is all the more reason why one needs to do their homework before starting.

<comment><USER7> You seem to be missing everyone's point.

Virtually anyone who would consider Elon Musk's ideas using your approach would immediately throw them out, for many many reasons. So your approach is meaningless unless you can tell everyone exactly what criteria to use when deciding if something "would not work."

If your assertion is just that you have to be so smart that you can analyze all the variables and correctly predict the future, then that's not really useful to anyone is it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a whole culture of boots-trappers who focus on testing and making pre-sales rather than sinking time on blind faith. I just came home from hanging out with them at

[https://www.microconf.com](https://www.microconf.com)

I don't see why blind faith is necessary for the majority of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER9> While I agree with the gist of the article I think "blind faith" is misleading. Having faith in your intuition is certainly the key. In my experience intuition comes from pattern recognition and often from recognition of discontinuities. Christopher Alexander, he of "A Pattern Language" has another book, "Notes on the Synthesis of form", in which he discusses what I think can be summarized as: we can tell that something is wrong, but understanding how to fix it is harder. At least that is what I took away.

The "blind" part half way applies. You have to have faith that you recognized something that that is out of kilter, and you have to be blind to the fact that you don't know the solution.

</comment><comment><USER10> Blind faith, with a good sense of when to open your eyes. There is always an element of faith in any venture or risk. But I doubt it is totally blind. If there is evidence that the idea is not working, you have to see it and adjust your plan. Do you think it is not working because your assumption was wrong? Or was it because your execution is flawed? Is it some temporal issue that should get fixed? You have to ask these questions constantly and know why you decided to push on, instead of ignoring everything.

</comment><comment><USER11> The key to building an idea is _inducing_ blind faith _in others_.

...imho.

Edit to expound: if you have blind faith in your idea, then when it is about to fail, you will go down with it. If you don't, and it's about to fail, you will recognise this and extract yourself in time to survive.

At that point it's up to your personal moral compass whether you help the others whose blind faith you've built to reach the escape pods.

</comment><comment><USER12> I do not believe in blind fate, but common sense. You can extrapolate the future following the trends just like Jules Verne did.

Take for example smartphones and tablets. After the "one computer in every desktop" was accomplished, it was obvious that one computer in every pocket was going to be the next big thing.

So companies like Microsoft invested billions of dollars in that (think in Pocket PCs and TabletPCs).

The vision became a reality and today all of us could have a GPS, cameras and more computer power that desktops had 10 years ago incredibly cheap.

We humans tend to believe only in what we can see, but some people just see the future possibilities just like they are realities. It is not like these people, the visionaries, have more faith than normal people, but that they see the future as real as if it exist here.

Of course watching the future as real have lots of problems in real life, specially when this people have to live along people only interested on reality, like doing the laundry or searching for a better "real job" instead of following "dreams".

</comment><comment><USER13> There is actually research that indicates "luck" isn't as random as we usually imagine. People with certain habits tend to be perceived as "lucky."

 _Faith_ literally means believing in something. The idea that believing something will work is simply delusional is inherently problematic.

You may actually have good reasons for believing it will work.

We always have only partial information. That doesn't mean just bulling on ahead, _and don 't confuse me with the facts_, is a good approach. It means that the people who succeed can't necessarily explain their success adequately to satisfy those who would like to follow in their footsteps.

I also would bet that sometimes they don't really want to explain it. Giving away "the secret sauce" may not be in their best interest.

<comment><USER14> I like the take Mark Burgess gives in _In Search of Certainty: The Science of Our Information Infrastructure_ where he states that separation of concerns is "a necessary consequence of loss of resolution due to scale ... a strategy for staying sane." Perhaps having scope-blinders and persistence is simply perceived by outsiders as irrational, whereas internally it is an intellectual tool for focus and achievement. Of course, there are drawbacks to mad focus...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The key to becoming a stock-market billionaire is taking big risks. But that does not mean it works for everybody it actually works for very few the lucky few.

Same thing probably happens with startups. You don't start a startup unless you have Blind Faith (btw. great album). But only a few of the startups make it big. When we see the ones that made it we may see that none of them would exist unless their founders had had blind faith. So (more or less) Blind Faith seems to be a prerequisite for success. But it is not a guarantee, far from it.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found the same strategy works for the lottery too.

<comment><USER17> Winning comment ^^

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The easiest option is always quitting. In the same way that a flexible opinion is a sign of intelligence in individuals, an adaptable vision is an asset to any venture. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

</comment><comment><USER18> Or lots of friends with money. I'm pretty sure blind faith is a euphemism for Always Be Selling and a willingness to go into deep debt.

</comment><comment><USER19> Unfortunately, the key to losing money, health and family while attempting to build an idea also seems to be blind faith.

</comment><comment><USER20> The key to building an idea is getting excited enough about it. Blind faith is counterproductive, as is faith in general.

<comment><USER21> Columbus discovered America but died thinking he found a shorter route to India, he was operating with the knowledge the earth is round but did not know how big the world is

<comment><USER22> I think in this context, "faith" and "knowledge" can be considered opposites. Sort of like "opinions" vs "facts", the former can emerge from the later but not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No, it is not.

You _do_ haveto suspend judgement, for a time, when it's not clear _whether_ the idea is good or not. That's the incubation stage, a point of deliberate, but measured, risk-taking.

Blind faith leads you to reject obvious signs of nonviability or danger. And whilst some may get lucky (or cash out before reality requests payment), many don't.

I'd suggest looking at the 3M model instead. Large-scale diversified but manageable risks.

<comment><USER24> Most people i met can not do that. They tear themselves to shreds, going back and forth over when to leap and where to leap. Sometimes you need a madmen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> From the section about Naming:

> Means something somewhat relevant to your company or is completely random.

Well, is there any other possibility?

<comment><USER26> Yes, you could name it something that has another established meaning that is not relevant to your company. Most names are like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The funny thing is, as logic and science-driven as I am, I've come to believe that this is actually true. We only have to rely on audacity and tenacity and serendipity because success is an emergent phenomenon that results from a loosely associated sequence of deterministic processes.

In other words, there is no formula for success because it's not a rational construct. Many of us aren't driven by credentials or money or power, yet those things are a prerequisite for anyone to listen to us or to have any kind of quality of life in a capitalistic society. The notion of success is at odds with its expression.

It's not that ideas are worthless, but that most people don't have the discipline to trade months or years of their lives to see them through. If the person with the idea is not the one who reaps its rewards, then it's easy to see how there could be bias against ideas. I would even go as far as to say that the most successful people have the fewest ideas that would change the status quo.

To put all of that in more of a positive light, I prefer to consider the success of others as part of any idea. So in these times, I feel that most startup ideas just aren't very good. They're too busy trying to satisfy constraints of finding capital or product-market fit or achieving a big exit instead of actually solving the problems facing the world like authoritarianism, underemployment, unsustainability, etc, etc, etc that are too numerous to even begin to list here. Maybe those challenges don't require big ideas so much as being more clever with how and where we apply the disruption we're so infatuated with where it could really make a difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my goal for www.nextcept.com. I focus all my spare time on building to see if I can create a new way of finding people to work with through personal questions rather than something like a resume. Thanks for checking out the article. It was more of just a rant about what I've run into over the years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The only people who win the lottery are those that are stupid enough to play.

<comment><USER23> The only people who lose the lottery, on the other hand ... are also those stupid enough to play.

And what are the odds?

<comment><USER16> The contradiction lies in the winning hand. You have to be stupid to win. Being stupid to lose is a given.

<comment><USER23> There are better games to play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Title of linked article: "How to know if an idea is any good."

</comment><comment><USER29> "If we had known it was impossible, we never would have succeeded."

<comment><USER17> Although Survivor bias very much

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ok. But why is blind faith a bad idea?

</comment><comment><USER31> @manabovethsky. Assuming this is true, do you think one develop blind faith for anything? Why or why not?

</comment><comment><USER32> The article appears to provide no support for it's bold claim. Why is that? Why can't they provide an argument that shows that examining the fundamentals and rational consequences of an idea can actually evaluate whether an idea is 'good' or not? That seems like a valid strategy to me. Often good ideas are rooted in a fundamental shift in perspective on an admitted need. Yet this article makes the claim that this method of evaluating a good idea, and every single other possible method one could formulate, must be wrong.

And then they fail utterly to ever substantiate or defend that claim. They just presume the audience accepts it on blind faith. This is a common problem with arguments that invoke 'blind faith' in almost any capacity. Even Kierkegaard's famous 'Leap of Faith' interpretation of belief in God (the idea that because God is beyond human understanding, belief in it can only come through a 'leap' and not through a chain of reasoning) is underlaid with an unsupported presumption that there exist things which can be beyond human understanding, or that such an idea is even sensical itself. Yet that is never supported there either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking out the article. These are really just areas I've found over the years. I'm sure there are many other successful methods.</comment></comment>


MessageParty (The Remix): A New Service For Location-Based Blogging (YC S10) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/messageparty-the-remix-a-new-service-for-location-based-blogging/

<comment><USER2> Just read the tc article. Looks really promising! A nice twist to Facebook event checkins + Foursquare checkins and blogging all in one. Right up there with what's really trending and working out. Excited to use it when it hits the California ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sweet pivot.

This could have also turned into an awesome location based hook up service. Localized hotornot etc :-).

</comment><comment><USER4> Any idea of when this will launch in LA/SF? I'd like to try it.</comment>


Biological sex shapes tumour evolution across cancer types - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00562-7 <comment><USER2> I believe the paper they are referring to is here:

[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/528968v2](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/528968v2)</comment>


Facebook releases tools to help detect memory leaks in iOS apps - <AUTHOR> https://code.facebook.com/posts/583946315094347 <comment><USER2> Hey everyone, my name is Greg. I have been working on releasing FBRetainCycleDetector, FBAllocationTracker and FBMemoryProfiler and am very excited we can share them with all of you today. These tools helped us fix a number of problems in our own codebase. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.</comment>


AI will create 'useless class' of humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/20/silicon-assassins-condemn-humans-life-useless-artificial-intelligence?sf=owgxvgy <comment><USER4> I see a lot of comments saying "this happened in the past, and the new technologies never made the humans useless". Well, maybe a good way to state the current problem is the following: the aim of this new technology is to produce _humans_. A potentially infinite amount of them. Running on electricity instead of food. Needing the space of a box. Without the need to sleep, socialize, furnish their apartments, look for love and raise kids. _If_ the technology is actually possible, there simply can't be any space left for old style, flesh and blood humans in the economy.

<comment><USER5> When this happens, costs for virtually everything will more or less go to zero, because we can make humans to make more humans to make everything else in our society that costs money. Try to imagine a society where virtually everything is free...visualize walking around and getting free coffee from Starbucks, free rides from Uber, free meals three times a day, free healthcare, free housing, etc. If everything is free, there isn't really a need for work and income at all. We're much further off from what you are suggesting than I think many proponents of AI realize, but this would be the other side of that coin.

<comment><USER6> You're assuming that human brains and bodies are grossly inefficient. I would argue that while humans are bad at some tasks, the brain is a fairly efficient _low-order_ general probabalistic computer, and the body is a fairly efficient as a highly general object manipulation system. I doubt for highly varied, extremely low value tasks that robots backed by AI will be significantly cheaper than humans for a long time, if ever. We're too close to the end of Moore's law, and energy efficiency is such a survival advantage that life has almost certainly optimized this variable fairly well.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget that natural evolution is a very slow and inefficient process, essentially driven by randomness, and that there is no such "optimization" that you describe, only selection. Moore's law may come to an end, but we have many great things coming such as quantum computing or nuclear fusion.

<comment><USER6> The natural selection process, when paired with random variation, is a functional optimization algorithm for things that impact survival. Energy efficiency very directly impacts survival. Ergo, life has "optimized" energy efficiency to some degree.

With regards to quantum computing and nuclear fusion, I prefer not to count my chickens before they've hatched. We may get both (and more!) or we may find that they are only functional under specific contexts that limit their utility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Typo - "AI will expand 'useless class' of humans"

<comment><USER9> Indeed. We have little need now for elevator operators.

But 100 years ago, when steam, electricity, and wide-spread mechanization of the previous decades had brought huge advantages in efficiency, the thought was that there would be increased leisure, and the time to pursue the activities which make us more human, like friendship, raising children, hobbies, and more serious avocations. Or watching TV, playing video games, and getting high.

This isn't the "useless class" but the "leisure class." Of course, quoting from the article:

> Harari, it turns out, has a specific definition of useless. "I choose this > very upsetting term, useless, to highlight the fact that we are talking > about useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system, not > from a moral viewpoint,"

If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want.

<comment><USER10> > If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want.

The term "useless" is inherently relative. The universe does not have a natural position on "usefulness". So yes, you _do_ get to make it to mean whatever you want it to be. That is not a basis to criticize anyone - <USER2> framework you choose to set a basis is itself arbitrary. Unless you believe in some "higher purpose", where all discussion ceases to be meaningful because nothing can be proven and you can claim whatever you want, and the loudest and/or strongest "wins".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not that they will be useless, it's just that their use does not make financial sense.

AI replaces humans when:

\- AI is able to perform a new human intelligence task

\- Perform at a human level of reliability

\- Perform at a cost-effective level

\- It is wrapped in form of a product or service that makes it easy to distribute and deploy

</comment><comment><USER12> > But our fate at the hand of clever cloggs robots may in fact be worse - <USER3> > summon a class of eternally useless human beings.

Can't help but notice the sensationalist tone.

The author also seems to have a pessimistic view of the future and the role of humans in it. Certain roles may be replaced by AI and humans will move on to do different things, but that does not mean it will render those humans useless. What exactly will humans move on to do is of course an open ended question, but if history is any indication, it won't be bleak as the author predicts.

</comment><comment><USER13> These screeds have one grave misunderstanding: that AI can compete with a human. It's like apples to oranges.

Alpha Go may have beat the best human player in the world but you can't ask it to fold the laundry or how it felt about Angela's Ashes.

I think we'll be able to optimize away boring, repetitive jobs and tasks that require vast numerical and statistical quantities. And that's a good thing.

We'll just need to adapt our economic models away from the indentured servitude to the Protestant Ethic.

<comment><USER14> Something I never see answered in these discussions: What are the previous workers to do, those whose jobs were so simple that a properly configured AI can perform it faster and better. Every other job that they would be capable of is just as likely to be replaced by another properly configured machine. If every possible tasks a person would be capable of handling can be solved by a specific machine in a better way then what should these people do? I am not talking about engineers or white collar workers. I'm talking about people who were unfortunately born with what I'd for a lack of a better word call "low IQ" though I know that the term and the science behind it is highly flawed. Currently, those persons are in the vast minority. Only a small percentile of the human population falls into this category. But as AI gets smarter, year over year, the minimal job requirement will grow.

I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where not everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.

<comment><USER13> First there's a slippery slope there. You presume that all menial tasks will be taken over by AI or robots. You also assume that some or all people who presently perform these menial tasks are not smart enough or capable of performing tasks beyond the menial ones.

The problem I have with that is that economic and political forces often keep people, intelligent people, in menial jobs for no better reason than circumstance. There are plenty of smart, capable people with real passions for music or mathematics who are stuck filling forms in an office because they need to a job to pay the rent and bills. There are many ways they could have ended up at that job.

But if they were given the opportunity to be free from that circumstance, what do you think they would do? If the economic output of the region is the same regardless, does it matter if they do nothing?

I have a belief that people will find more productive things to do that they previously never could.

> I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where > not everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.

That's what I meant when I suggested we would need to shift our economic models away from the ideals set out by Max Weber. Criticisms about the formation of capitalism aside it traded serfdom for indentured servitude. It allowed us to transform our world and build great things... but I think it's time is nearing an end.

But yet the greatest opponents to change are those with the most to lose. And they have quite a lot of money and power.

 _update_ grammar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Humans with fewer skills than the elite were not pushed out of the employment market by the invention of dishwashers, laundry machines, or vacuum cleaners. The invention of AI is hardly different.

<comment><USER14> A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different, you just train it on the task like you'd train a human worker and that's it. No need to invent a new machine.

<comment><USER16> >A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need to create a very particular machine. AI is different

It's absolutely not. Siri's never driven a car or beaten a human at Go.

<comment><USER17> Even if it was, unless you're saying robots are going to buy and sell things to each other, all economic activity is oriented around humans. There's no point to AI without us. As well put a dishwasher in the jungle. The monkeys might like it, but they sure won't use it to wash clothes.

<comment><USER18> > There's no point to AI without us.

But all of us? That's where the class thing comes in.

<comment><USER17> If AI is truly useful, then it'll be put to use for everybody. Technology has been dicking around with our social classes for thousands of years.

You could argue that technology is the whole reason we have social classes in the first place.

You have to ask yourself what's so different about AI. It's an interesting question, but none of the more dramatic answers are really unprecedented. It's a "what is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true," sort of deal.

Is it going to make some of us useless? Then it's going to make all of us useless, because there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only the elites. All technology eventually filters out to serve everyone.

<comment><USER18> > there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only the elites.

Why? If it's the elites that deploy it?

<comment><USER17> Technology is always deployed first by the elites to serve the elites. But those elites don't live in a vacuum and are never completely self-sufficient. So eventually they'll want to trade access to their technology for something they do want.

An example of this is military tech. The US sells surplus military equipment to anybody that will buy it, even sophisticated kit like F-16s. Naturally, they keep the best stuff to themselves, you can't buy an F-22 at the moment for any price. But eventually even the F-22 will be old tech and you'll be able to buy one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In terms of obsolescence, it's dog eat dog within the tech world too. On Friday, our new COO told the dev team (we were not consulted, just the CEO) of his plans to move the back office to the cloud (salesforce). Nobody but the coo knows salesforce. The guy beside me was devops (the guy who deals with AWS, docker and the server) he was basically made obsolete for the company. I have the weekend to decide if I want to learn salesforce (some shitty version of Java ( which is shitty already) called apex) or start looking for a job. So I have a lot of empathy for the workers who have these automation obsolescence dropped on them. It will hit us all.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am a programmer. Its totally possible for this to happen. But, bugs will buy us time. We are too stupid (for now, a new language or proof system could change this) to write good enough software to destroy ourselves. Also energy efficiency. Organic life is crazy efficient at turning food into work (If you have access to abundant clean water). Give a person a happy meal and they can walk for days. A robot of the same size/weight/strength will kill it's battery or exhaust it's fossil fuel tank in a few hours.

The last programmer putting the finishing touches on artificial _general_ intelligence (the one that will put programmers out of work too) just needs to make sure "love the meat bags who made you" is the second last instruction. The _last_ instruction is don't alter the second last instruction.

Personally, I would enjoy hiking the west coast trail, drawing and painting more. I will miss coding through. I love the feeling when it finally work the way you want it to. The point being: if we are smart enough to automate all the jobs, we are probably smart enough to provide food/healthcare to everyone for free (basic living wage or whatever). It's not the end of world. There are lots of ways to spend your time.

<comment><USER20> First, read the article before commenting. This is about automation replacing jobs, not the singularity.

Second energy efficiency isn't a big deal. A robot army that runs on petrol is still scary. Energy efficiency has not kept machines from beating humans physically, at all.

Lastly, it's impossible to code "love the meat bags who made you". AI's do not take English language instructions. You need to specify exactly what you mean by "love" and "meat bags", etc, and not make any mistakes at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Jack Williamson attempted a kind of exposition of these issues in The Humanoids (1948), the follow up to his classic story With Folded Hands ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands)).

What's interesting about the book is his attempt to validate a human existence in which it is not necessary for humans to do anything practical whatsoever...unless they wish to.

Personally I think we are hundreds of years away from needing to start to worry about this problem. We're more likely to get destroyed some other way first.

Fun times.

</comment><comment><USER22> Always worth linking to Marshall Brain's "Manna" with a title like that;

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER23> it could also unleash a lot of currently stupidly-employed people to do what they'd actually excel at.

<comment><USER24> Do we really need more of them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Every time a new tech emerges someone will always say, that the new tech will take away human jobs.

The new tech will take away human jobs. But the humans will just go do other newly created jobs.

<comment><USER24> That has been the general trend over time, but AI breaks this trend. The basic problem is there is minimum wage below which humans can't survive. No such lower limit exists with AI. At some point every job can be performed for less by an AI.

<comment><USER26> > No such lower limit exists with AI.

Not true. The price of materials and the energy needed to run it determines the lower limit on cost for AI. The cost of energy to run computers is pretty low -- low enough that a lot of people don't really think about it until you get up to clusters of the size found in computer labs and data centers -- but it's not _nothing_ either.

I will agree though that the minimum cost to run a super-human AI (once it becomes available) is likely to be substantially less than the minimum wage needed to pay humans to do equivalent work.

<comment><USER24> I should have been more precise - no such lower limit is known. Given how inherently inefficient the human brain is in turning energy into output then I would not want to bet that AIs will cost more than humans indefinantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Comparative advantage isn't abolished just because the advantage is large.

Economic participation by a class of entities who have a lower capacity for production than every other class of entities is still useful to all involved.

A great many of the world's prejudices, fears, and passionate causes are driven by ignorance of basic economic principles, and this is another example.

<comment><USER20> Comparative advantage only works if you have something of value to trade. If AIs automates away your job, then you no longer have anything of value to trade with.

<comment><USER27> Your comment rather illustrates my point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A lot of weird stuff happens close to zero. Dropping from $1/loaf of bread to $0.50/loaf is only fifty cents, which for some people seems tiny. For someone who doesn't have a job or any assets generating income, the fifty cents means they can afford to eat.

</comment><comment><USER29> Seems to me that a large section of the population is already at this point without AI. The other weakness of this argument is that in order to perform many of the human jobs, the AI will need a robotic body. Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.

<comment><USER30> > a large section of the population is already at this point without AI.

Which section? Just about any able-bodied person can create enough value to feed/house themselves by washing dishes, stocking shelves, mopping floors, staring at security camera monitors, etc.

> Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.

A human will not work a job that doesn't pay their cost of living (or if they do it won't be for very long because that's not sustainable). If that means $20k per year, then I would guess robots will have no problem competing on cost. When the software is ready, anyway. Probably not within 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Management structures in existing companies have already created this in some places I have worked.

</comment><comment><USER32> When AI can create prize-winning art (literature, art, film) then I will become scared, as the only role left will be consumer.

</comment><comment><USER33> People of leisure!</comment>


The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston's Route 128 In The Dust - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/31/the-valley-of-my-dreams-why-silicon-valley-left-bostons-route-128-in-the-dust/

<comment><USER2> How did the author completely leave out the difference in employment laws. California: you're free to go work for anyone you want. Mass.: you're free to work for anyone, except our competitors or anyone we think might be a competitor, read your contract dummy.

If you work in a specific field, would you really want to be in the state that enforces clauses in work contracts that restricts your mobility. Or the one that sees work as every man has a right to eat. Most likely, the people looking to hire you are your employers rival.

<comment><USER3> Does anyone really care about non-competes? Spend a winter in the Boston area and you'll find a simpler reason that people prefer the valley. I doubt that life in New England has ever been described as "easy". Given a choice between two otherwise equivalent locations, climate has a huge impact. Imagine the same decision when the easier climate is already seen as the better choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _it wasn't so long ago that Silicon Valley was considered a poor cousin of Boston's tech center_

This was never true. It's true that the Valley has pulled further ahead of Route 128, but it was always the leader.

<comment><USER5> Growing up in MA as a DEC child, I'll admit my perspective is biased... but when I grew up when DEC was the #2 computer company in the world. And they were far from the only Route 128 powerhouse. I'm not saying the Valley doesn't have its own powerful history, but think about this: In its heyday, Route 128 was so big that, decades later, the _rubble_ from what is left is still the #2 tech center in the US and the world.

<comment><USER6> No question, but was it ever really startup-heavy?

<comment><USER5> Well, back in the day DEC was an MIT startup, wasn't it? And these days there are a lot of ex-DEC, ex-Data General, etc. startups. That being said, I guess my upbringing is coming through - I care more about tech-heavy than startup- heavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's different now is that there are plenty of people in MA (like MassTLC) that are now actively trying to turn things in a better direction (as opposed to the 80s and 90s complacency). I'm hopeful something good will come out of that (even if it ends up being as small as catching up to California on non- competes).

</comment><comment><USER3> This post shallowly re-iterates "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" (1994 <http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/SAXREG.html>), while praising the Valley's success.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's no snow to shovel in Silicon Valley. Does that matter? Hell, yeah.

</comment><comment><USER8> 128 benefited mightily from Tip O'Neill when he was speaker of the house. Much of this coincided with the Reagan defense build-up. O'Neill made sure his state got more than its share of those dollars.

This also held true, to a lesser extent, for the late Ted Kennedy. But now that Tip and Ted are both gone the 128 area has had to compete on its own. Hence Si valley's growing lead.

To some extent it's a matter of following the money.</comment>


Introducing Spotify Connect - <AUTHOR> https://www.spotify.com/connect/

<comment><USER2> So basically Spotify is now letting you remote control its application?</comment>


1.3B page views per month – it's all about performance - <AUTHOR> https://stackexchange.com/performance <comment><USER2> Great infographic and overview.

I'm interested in why such low CPU usage is a good thing on the app servers. I understand the need for handling spikes, but they're saying in the infographic that max is 12%.

My uninformed, initial thinking was "That's a lot of wasted CPU" on the app machines. Can anyone explain why spending the extra money and having 88%-95% unused CPU vs. scaling back the number of machines and running them at 50% load?

<comment><USER3> Could be the number of concurrent requests they can serve by scaling out to more servers</comment></comment>


What I Learned From Making Hot Sauce at Scale in China - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jingtheory/what-i-learned-from-making-hot-sauce-at-scale-2cbb8ec709ba <comment><USER2> Small note for a anyone on a similar path researching reliable China-based fulfillment for crowdfunding campaigns or ecommerce..

We have tested and physically inspected literally every major and minor Hong Kong and China fulfillment provider, and settled upon SPNS ( [https://warehouse.expert](https://warehouse.expert) ).

They are the only provider we found with western-education, that provide actual service (customer support, optimising routes and delivery companies, working directly with your end customer to reduce loss, fighting with couriers to negotiate refunds and insurance etc)

The guy heading up the operation is Victor, and can be contacted via firstname.lastname@example.com

(Full disclosure: I am not associated with the company - but having spent years finding a decent solution am happy to share it)

</comment><comment><USER3> 4\. The Human Element of Food Manufacturing

Basically in China human manufacturing rules over all. Many westerners have misconceptions about automation in factories. Those fancy iPhone XR's? Assembled by Hand in China (with mechanical assistance) but still, assembled by Hand by real people.

China has way too high population for automation. If you call to build a factory, there will be millions of people wanting jobs. These jobs are not good jobs and are labour intensive, but the desire for jobs outweighs any other concern.

<comment><USER4> I was struck by this when I went to visit Shanghai in 2002. I was sitting beside a recent MBA grad who was originally from China.

We got to talking. At one point in the conversation he asked me a hypothetical question about how I would design a system to determine traffic conditions. I responded with an answer laying out cameras at intersections and software to make sense of the video.

He responded that in China they'd just put a person at every intersection who would send a text message to a team of humans who would update a webpage. It drove home the point to me that labour was so abundant and cheap there that you could often throw more bodies at the problem instead of writinf software... and probably solve the problem better.

<comment><USER5> China is interesting from this respect, there are so many people, and it is in the government's best interest to keep the citizens employed and happy and therefore there is a lot of "useless" jobs like the one you mention. The first time I visited I was shocked at the number of people employed to man the tollbooths and the number of people working in every restaurant until I realized why.

<comment><USER6> _it is in the government 's best interest to keep the citizens employed and happy and therefore there is a lot of "useless" jobs like the one you mention._

What is useless to one man is a lifeline to another.

I saw a documentary on NHK, and one of the points it made is that there are millions and millions and millions of people in China who need a job — any job — just to put food on the table. These are people who are so poor and poorly educated that they don't even know how to write their own names. Signatures are done with a fingerprint in red ink.

This one guy was so very happy to be employed full-time clearing sidewalks. With a broom made of twigs during the warm months, and with the same broom made of twigs to slowly clear deep snow in the cold months. But he was employed, by an organization that will pay him regularly and won't cheat him on his wages. So he's grateful to be better off than most of the other people he knows.

<comment><USER7> Those people don't need jobs, they need money. If your system is autocratic enough to just "create" jobs out of nothing, it could also give everybody a stipend. That's just not how they want to do it.

<comment><USER8> Employment helps social stability but money-only doesn't. While stipend for low-incomers also exists in China, gov really wants more people earn a living through working. IMO, the benefits are: 1. It puts people into time schedules, not floating around. 2. Makes them integrated into a "work community". 3. These jobs still help, not purely "created". 4. Employer will have some insurances and coverages.

Over years I agree that many jobs diminished with the introduction of machines (vacuum trucks, etc.). It would be a tough job for the government to find more positions in this kind.

<comment><USER9> This is a worthwhile point really - job scheduling is a good way to pacify a population, which helps everyone. Having people hanging around bored is one of the sure-fire ways to get unrest.

<comment><USER10> Especially when "people" are young, single men.

<comment><USER11> seems to have helped everyone in this board during yours childhood and teen years, when you could just play games and learn to code, which became most people here trade. but yeah, if you missed that by not being born rich, work until your back break, to build character or some other bs.

<comment><USER10> If you are playing games and learning to code, you are not bored and definitely not the type of young men I was talking about.

<comment><USER11> you probably will not be able to complete that sentence without being called racist, xenophobic or both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a lovely marketing piece. Great story, and hammers home the drive to quality, which of course backs up the brand. And it's a story of triumph over adversity, which makes you root for the little guy (or girl, in this case).

Very smart.

<comment><USER13> Umami, that umami texture...

<comment><USER14> Still no clue what that is after reading the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > " Chili supplier and blend: I found a supplier who stone-grinds their dried > chilis the traditional way rather than using a machine, which retains the > luster, natural oils and bright red color that I needed the sauce to have."

This sounds remarkably similar to the problem faced by people who are into seriously expensive coffee. Basically, a "conical burr" grinder crushes the beans together, whereas a cheap spinning blade type grinder chops them apart into flaky bits. The former is strongly preferred by coffee snobs, and the use of the latter is seen as barely better than buying preground coffee.

My theory is that the _stone_ part is actually not essential, but it's the crushing/grinding mechanism that preserves the oil and luster (could be done equally well with stainless steel), whereas some sort of shredding blade allows too much of the oils to escape.

<comment><USER16> At the higher end of coffee, there's a big debate about whether conical or flat burrs are better. The absolute top of the line grinders (at $2k) have both options: [https://www.kafatek.com/](https://www.kafatek.com/)

<comment><USER15> That looks like a piece of laboratory equipment.

<comment><USER17> When most peoole cook at home, all they're doing is shoddy chemistry with bad lab equipment.

Getting slightly better equipment is the best way to improve your cooking or make anything the same way more than once.

Want to remember an exact reduction for a sauce? Use a refractometer and record the results. Want to scale a recipe easily? Covert it to % soln or mass/mass (see baker's ratio).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if/how you would do any kind of continuous testing with food/aromatic products like this. Have a taste panel on site? Do some basic go/no go tests for what, pH, viscosity, gas chromatograph (lol?).

Hard to put test points on a jar of sauce.

<comment><USER19> The Sriracha company doesn't try too hard to make each batch identical from their FAQ - just the variation in chiles alone make that impossible except within a 55 gallon mix, it sounds like it would not be possible without using a lot of additional ingredients to smooth out the flavor between batches like companies do with orange juice.

[https://www.huyfong.com/#pg-54-1](https://www.huyfong.com/#pg-54-1)

PS. if near Los Angeles, they have factory tours and welcome photography of everything.

<comment><USER20> I think I really like that.

I had an interesting conversation the with an oyster farmer about the variability in taste geographically in the northeast.

And to me, honey is just honey. But apparently some folks can discern by taste which flower pollens comprise a batch.

But then you drink a Coca Cola, which tastes exactly the same no matter where or when. It's like it's more of a chemistry experiment than a food.

<comment><USER21> A can of coke is the same everywhere. Fountain cola varies wildly since restaurants use different levels of carbonation, syrup and freshness. McDonalds fountain coke is the best.

<comment><USER22> Between countries, a can of Coca Cola varies[1], particularly in the amount of sugar[2], as well as the type (HFCS in the US, cane or beet sugar in most other places).

[1] [https://www.coca-cola.co.uk/faq/does-coca-cola-produce- the-s...](https://www.coca-cola.co.uk/faq/does-coca-cola-produce-the-same- drinks-in-every-country)

[2] [http://www.actiononsugar.org/media/actiononsugar/news- centre...](http://www.actiononsugar.org/media/actiononsugar/news- centre/surveys-/2015/International-Drinks-Data.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Making large batches of food homogeneous is super hard. It is hard enough to do it in small batches, but when you scale up the processes gravity really becomes your enemy.

For the automated filling I would look at using a spout with a shaker attached to it that can measure off a very precise amount of granular material without getting clogged.

Finally, nobody seems to be wearing either latex gloves or masks in any of the photos, that may be to make the photos nicer but it is not how you run a proper food packaging chain that has humans in the loop.

<comment><USER22> > Finally, nobody seems to be wearing either latex gloves or masks in any of > the photos

They're sticking labels on sealed jars and putting them in a box, what benefit would gloves and masks bring?

<comment><USER24> On the gloves end, less wear and tear on the skin (callouses), and better grip.

<comment><USER5> Have you ever tried to handle a label with rubber gloves on? It is damn near impossible.

<comment><USER24> You need to hold the jar with one hand. Wear a glove on that hand, pick the label off with the other.

It would be more efficient to have separate labellers and box fillers, but that's more RSI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great post! I've seen the hardware side of manufacturing and also been amazed at how hard packaging / filling is when my ex launched a hair care line... her conditioner was also too viscous to go through the factory nozzles :/

</comment><comment><USER26> Whatever Jenny Gao is doing, she's on point with marketing. I've been seeing her and her product all over the internet for a month now.

<comment><USER27> The writing skill speaks for itself. I followed every single link she included, and was utterly engaged by every word and entry.

I suppose there is also the aspect that she is engaging different types of readers (foodies, techies, entrepreneurs, etc), but honestly I was ready to buy the sauce three paragraphs into my first read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My biggest lesson and cautionary tale after launching a professional services company in Shanghai, think English resume editing, LinkedIn Profiles creation, interview coaching and academic entrance services, is to to pick your partners very carefully. There is an infuriating aspect to contracts here where upon signature, the real negotiations on terms begins, even for the simplest points. Be prepared to spend inordinate time on what would be obvious and elementary in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER29> > 1\. No one will demand excellence from your product except you.

I agree so much with this. Put more cynically, no one cares more about your problems than you.

</comment><comment><USER30> Congratulations. Curious if there are any concerns about counterfeits showing up in China - or is this really aimed at the overseas market?

<comment><USER24> Author says: "The good news is, the labels look beautiful and are basically irreplicable — good luck to anyone who tries to knock off my branding."

But that sounds like a challenge.

<comment><USER31> I think the author just underestimates Chinese ingenuity when it comes to counterfeit goods. There's more to just spoofing the label. There's also naming, pricing, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This story is amazing and probably a parable for every hardware based startup.

</comment><comment><USER33> let's better not tell her to read Poorly made in China if she thinks her product will have same ingredients/formula after few months of production, that book perfectly describe daily Chinese reality/mentality if you are interested, can confirm it as someone who worked there for years. for starters any contract it's useless piece of paper

</comment><comment><USER34> If you were non-Chinese, how do you go about finding suppliers, factories, label designers etc who can manufacture the prototype you have?

<comment> barry-cotter You find some people in your city who used to work in China, talk to them, hear how hard sourcing and quality control was and probably give up. Or you find those people on LinkedIn but this stuff is hard for people who really understand China. Making the right connections is hard, staying on top of communications is hard, quality control is comically hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Her backers have had to discover Laoganmna before dishing out money...</comment>


Got Hacking? Git Hacking. - <AUTHOR> http://githacking.com We love Github! We love to hack! We love hanging out with other hackers and finding cool things to work on. Githacking is a way to find said cool projects. We just launched out of Philadelphia Startup Weekend.<p>Check us out, let us know what you think. Lots more to come. <comment><USER2> I would like to suggest that folks consider working on git itself. The git mailing list is very friendly and supportive and you will be making a valuable contribution to the git community. You'll also have an opportunity to brush up your C skills with guidance from some excellent C hackers.

If you aren't a C coder, you can help to improve the documentation (really, just pick a man page, there are many that can use improving). Or, look at it as an opportunity to learn C -- some parts of git are quite advanced, but there's also lots of areas that are easy to work on.

See the git wiki for some areas that can use love:

<https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Janitor>

<https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ToDo>

<https://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Wishlist>

(Sadly the wiki is down right now, so please paste those links into google and click the cached link.)

So go on, get yourself listed on <http://git-scm.com/about>

:)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for this-- just the reply I was looking for. Out of curiosity, which man pages need the most work right now?

<comment><USER2> How about the fetch and push man pages:

[http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- fetch.ht...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-fetch.html)

[http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git- push.htm...](http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-push.html)

Even the summaries are terrible:

 _git-fetch - Download objects and refs from another repository_

 _git-push - Update remote refs along with associated objects_

Now, I haven't been a git newbie in ages, but I imagine a beginner asking "what is this objects and refs about?" How about:

 _git-fetch - Download changes from another repository_

 _git-push - Upload changes to another repository_

(Warning: there will be lots of back-and-forth on the mailing list about doc changes. Old timers tend to want the man pages to be technically correct, even though I think this makes the documentation harder on beginners. I suppose the argument is that the man pages are reference type documentation, but I still think there's lots of room for improvement.)

<comment><USER4> Man pages are suited to be as terse and technically correct as possible. I say leave the wording that is easier on beginners to web tutorials and books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a cool idea. You might want to check with a lawyer about the logo up top though, thats definitely GitHub's octocat hiding behind Apple's Terminal.app logo.

<comment><USER6> No need to consult a lawyer, just open an issue at <http://support.github.com> and ask if it's okay.

<comment><USER7> No need to do that, they've pointed out in the past that it's a stock image they've bought the rights to use and can not authorize others to use it.

I forget where I read this, but it was someone asking the same thing. I might have been on HN, actually.

<comment><USER8> GitHub now owns the octocat art.

<comment><USER9> You guys should seriously think about allowing other projects to use the octocat when the projects are associated to github.

it would be a nice way of everybody having a common "icon", much like twitter has the bird.

I know people can link to github, but that's not always possible (mobile apps?) even though people use github..

<comment><USER10> Twitter previously used some stock bird art, but the logo was just the bubble letters. Now they have an original bird logo. But 3rd party Twitter stuff can use arbitrary bird art, or maybe the old stock one since it's unclear who owns it.

I think a good solution would be a new open license logo, like the Minefield logo as opposed to the restricted Firefox logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats for a great startup weekend.

I love the idea. A couple of months ago I created gistcube[1], It was a weekend project to learn a bit about Mongodb and Sinatra. Gistcube is a way to discover interesting gist in github. You can vote up, add to favorites, tag gists, and alos sign up to interesting/tags gist using rss.

[1] <http://gistcube.com>

<comment><USER10> Cool drop shadow.

<comment><USER11> Thx man, was my first attempt to design anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really hate the global web proxy at my university (RWTH Aachen).

       (1, MALWARE, Phishing, Domain has unusually high traffic volume for a very recent registration. Identified as a phishing or spam-related site., BLOCK-MALWARE, 0x0b216460, 1296449561.941, QAAAAQAAAAAAAAAAG/8ACP8AAAD/AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=, http://githacking.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the business model, but what prevents someone from looking at a developer's solution and incorporating it without paying the developer? Say the company is charged when they use the patching mechanism to bring developer's work into their product. What would stop them from simply going around this mechanism and just copy and paste the solution into their own repository?

Also is the developer responsible for fixing bugs in their solution? Can a developer exploit the process by submitting buggy code they'll be paid extra to fix? Can a developer be required to fix bugs in their solution?

If a company can't inspect code before they pay they can't be certain it's relatively bug free, if they can inspect the code they could use it without paying for it easily.

<comment><AUTHOR> You raise a great point. Still stuff to work out. This is the result of 54 hours of work (Philadelphia Startup Weekend) so definitely expect more in the coming weeks.

<comment><USER14> I think it's a great idea. Our company has various projects on github that could use a second pair of eyes other than our engineers. We wouldn't mind putting a bounty on it if someone were to commit a python library or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I actually spent a longer moment looking for signup form, then I started to think what to input there (email, login, or what).

<comment><USER16> Thanks. We're updating it right now. It'll be up in a few minutes.

<comment><USER15> Maybe you can add gray text on input field saying 'enter your email' or something like that, that disappears when input field is clicked?

<comment><USER16> We're on it. Thanks for the help. We're putting it in right now and should be up in a few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great idea!

Where is my e-mail going? What are you planning to do with it?

Also, there is no identification on who is running the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. We're Chris (@chrisbaglieri), John (@codingjester), Josiah (@bluepojo), and Aaron (@aaronfeng). This company was born over the course of 54 hours at Philadelphia Startup Weekend.

The emails will be used once and only once, to announce when we're open to the public.

<comment><USER17> Thank you. Perhaps add that to the site and you'll give off a lot more "warm and fuzzies."

<comment><AUTHOR> Added a quick note about only using emails once and only once. We'll add an about page in the coming day profiling each of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> that page is purdy but it really should explain what it's about. what's the plan. all i can tell is that it involves Git and they want an email. to be more specific: what is it beyond what we already have today with something like GitHub?

<comment><AUTHOR> For developers, we're about connecting them to projects that they'll likely be interested in contributing to; these projects may or may not be most forked or trending. A lot of repository identification is word of mouth which, for those on on the outer rings of the open source community, may be lacking. We want to change that.

For maintainers, we're about finding developers to fill the needs of their projects. Open sourcing is step one, promoting and keeping traction can be tough. We want to arm maintainers with more to help accomplish this.

For businesses that rely on the open source code contributors and maintainers support, we want to provide a platform that they can leverage whether it's support or issue resolution. Businesses win because they get fixes, for example. Maintainers and contributors win being rewarded for their efforts.

We have several other ideas we're exploring; lot's more to come.

<comment><USER18> thanks! i recommend putting something like what you said on the project's home page, or, just a link off of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not really sure what this is/does. Can someone summarize? Is it search/social thing built on github?

<comment><AUTHOR> Social is a little misleading. It's more about connecting developers to projects. For contributors, it's about finding projects that would be of interest to them. For maintainers, it's about finding developers to fill the needs of their projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome! I hope this rolls out soon. Brings in more incentive to support open-source

</comment><comment><USER21> This is neat, i intend to use it. I've been thinking recently it would be great if there was "OkCupid for code" and once you have enough data to predict good matches for people <=> projects you could do some interesting things.

</comment><comment><USER22> We ended up winning 1st prize for Startup Weekend (we posted this in advance of the demo). Here's our presentation:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1OhsAUMWbM>

</comment><comment><USER23> Text is cut off on the right side of the boxes on iPhone. I love the idea though.

<comment><USER16> Shit. We totally didn't even think about mobile our bad. Once we get some sleep and probably get back from our day jobs, we'll see what we can do about it.

<comment><USER23> Not a huge problem, just polishing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Awesome</comment>