AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 3 1200 CPU Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/11658/the-amd-ryzen-3-1300x-ryzen-3-1200-cpu-review <comment><USER2> I'm still waiting for this nasty hardware bug to be addressed: [https://community.amd.com/message/2796982](https://community.amd.com/message/2796982)

Or actually, there are 2 bugs. Some random freezes, and heavy multithreading segfaults.

<comment><USER3> This should get more recognition from the media. Especially as AMD are launching server and high-end CPUs with high core-counts (where I assume a large part of the market will be programmers), getting 120fps instead of 140fps in ${SOME_GAME} is irrelevant compared to unpredictable crashes during `make -j 16`.

Personally I would like to build a Ryzen (possibly ThreadRipper, depending on pricing) computer this year, but that is definitely on hold until this issue is fixed.

<comment><USER4> Are there any performance benchmarks associated with building software? Similar to your point, gaming benchmarks are totally meaningless to me, but I would love to learn about the difference in time it takes to build some large software (e.g. Chrome) on various cpus.

<comment><USER5> AnandTech runs a Chrome Compile benchmark in every review under the office benchmarks section.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/11550/the-intel-skylakex- revie...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11550/the-intel-skylakex-review- core-i9-7900x-i7-7820x-and-i7-7800x-tested/14)

[http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1857](http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1857)

<comment><USER6> Chrome compilation should be heavily parallelized. (It is my core use case. I only care about system big project compilation speed. )

The report seems to show Intel 4C/8T is doing better than AMD 8C/16T with much bigger L2/L3 cache config.

Is 7700K really that good? Can anyone from AMD explain this?

Intel (Kaby Lake) Core i7 7700K (91W, $339) 4C/8T, 4.2 GHz, 1MB L2, 8MB L3 17.81

AMD (Zen) Ryzen 7 1800X (95W, $499) 8C/16T, 3.6 GHz, 4MB L2, 16MB L3 16.32

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just from an year ago the cpu market has changed completely. The sheer amount of choice at all levels is staggering. For the mid level user the 1600 especially is a formidable offering, and the 1700 with 8 cores just ups the ante.

As a old Barton user it's really exciting to see AMD climb its way out of nearly a decade of darkness. A well deserved kudos to Lisa and the team.

When we talk about female CEOs she is rarely mentioned but here she is in probably one of the most technology intensive industries with a company that was clearly floundering and she has led AMD confidently out of the woods into a position of strength. What a performance.

<comment><USER8> > When we talk about female CEOs she is rarely mentioned but here she is in > probably one of the most technology intensive industries with a company that > was clearly floundering and she has led AMD confidently out of the woods > into a position of strength. What a performance.

This. It seems amazing to have a technical CEO (she has a PhD from MIT) who also has management and turnaround ability.

<comment><USER9> She might have a technical degree, but they didn't take she from layout out a circuit board (or whatever) and make her CEO. She has been working her way up the management chain for at least 15 years. She has been successful in all that effort, and so she was rewarded with more responsibility, a task she has rising to.

When you look at successful CEOs in general, they are mostly promoted from within, after working their way up the ranks. That she has only been at AMD for a couple years total and seems to be doing well is more surprising than that she has a technical degree: technical degrees imply enough intelligence to figure out how to do management tasks if you want to take that route.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well, some healthy competition in the budget-friendly CPU market, and a good alternative to Intel's i3 (slacking) lineup. Great news for customers!

<comment><USER11> They are missing an iGPU, especially in that price segment.

<comment><USER12> We're already a month into the promised release period of 2H17 for Raven Ridge. Let's hope it comes out closer to the beginning of 2H17 than the end.

[http://wccftech.com/amd-raven-ridge-ryzen-apu-vega-gpu- leak/](http://wccftech.com/amd-raven-ridge-ryzen-apu-vega-gpu-leak/)

<comment><USER13> We will likely see Zen-based laptops before we see Zen-based standalone APUs, with laptops coming for the holiday season (ie: Oct/Nov) and APUs late 1H18.

<comment><USER14> I wouldn't mind seeing a good Zen based laptop... Something around an R7 1700 would be nice, maybe 10-20% lower clock for thermals. Something capable of 64gb ram and user serviceable nvme and/or ssd would be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are the TDP figures to be trusted? How does the heat produced compare with Intel offerings? The last time I bought an AMD my PC felt like a hair dryer, will I regret going AMD again?

<comment><USER16> Just look at the power consumption metrics in the review. If it used less power, it produced less heat. Nearly all the power that's used is directly converted to heat.

TDP doesn't mean anything about what the CPU will produce under actual loads, it's the budget that the OEM should provide to satisfy the performance target of the CPU.

Simple example of this is the 51W TDP Intel chips consistently used more power (and thus produced more heat) than the 65W TDP Intel chip. The reason is Intel is OK with the 51W TDP chips thermal-throttling more than they are the 65W TDP part, because that's the performance they are selling.

Under full load the Ryzen 3 1200 was power-competitive with the Intel offerings, whereas the Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 5 1500X used 20w more power.

20W is not going to be that noticeable, though.

<comment><USER17> It depends where that 20W is going... on the floor or into your lap and hands?

I'm building a small cluster of i3 NUCs, but I like AMD so this is intriguing. Power efficiency is important to me, and 20W is less negligible when it's multiplied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is AMD planning to release something with integrated graphics? It's nice that they're making parts available without it, but it seems like a lot of people buying cheap CPUs would rather not buy a separate GPU.

<comment><USER19> In the beginning of the article, they state "Zen paired with graphics, coming in Q3/Q4"

<comment><USER18> Ah, I missed it. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While the benchmarks shows AMD is doing well, I wonder How much disadvantage are AMD Zen getting with the current compiler and software optimizes for Intel?

I am still eagerly waiting for Zen + Vega APU.

<comment><USER21> Stuff using Intel's compiler or maths libraries is going to suck, somewhat.

Other stuff, that's just using MSVC/gcc/clang/llvm code targeted to Skylake/Haswell etc will run just fine, as Zen's microarch is similar enough.

AMD's own compiler is like a 3% performance difference for us, compared to regular clang. No big influence, basically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What about Zen powered laptops? What is holding them back?

<comment><USER13> Zen CPU sales are expected to be brisk for some time, supply yields are likely an issue as well as laptop OEMs probably feeling skittish about pricing.

AMD announced a refresh of their APUs but it's probably just a half-hearted stop-gap aimed at those wanting current-gen Vega-based graphics but too impatient to wait for Zen-based compute. The holy grail of Zen compute/Vega graphics systems are coming down the pipe but probably just in time for the 2017 back-to-school season, if not Black Friday/holiday season.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I bought a Ryzen desktop with an asrock motherboard a few weeks ago. It was very unstable. Installed Ubuntu 17.04 with upgraded kernel. Most crash / lock ups happened when running vmware workstation. I returned the desktop and now have a very stable Intel I7. It seems like the issue was a combination of the CPU and the motherboard. I assume Ryzen + asrock will run fine on Windows 10.

<comment><USER24> >asrock

Well, I would say that ASRock is not the best motherboard brand around. Try Asus or MSI next time.

<comment><USER25> Can offer an opposing anecdote. I have an ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16, loaded with tons of RAM, hard drives and PCIe cards running a bunch of VMs (some with GPU passthrough) and it's been 100% stable. Plus their support has been awesome -- I had an issue with a bent pin and they did a complete motherboard check for me for free, then threw a bunch of SATA cables in the box when they sent it back.

Having said that, they're one of the smaller manufacturers, and it wouldn't surprise me if they're still in the process of getting on top of some of the issues that inevitably come up with a new platform.

It also wouldn't surprise me if GP got a lemon. It can happen with any manufacturer.

As it is, though, I'm a very happy customer of theirs.

<comment><USER24> True. Some statistics I've seen once showed that Asus is the most reliable, but I got a lemon from them once. It's all just probabilities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> IMHO, the single-thread performance/dollar graph at the end of the article says it all. At this price range, I've found that workloads are still mostly single-threaded. The Intel parts are still the king with their decent clock rates and their deep pipelines. The Ryzen 3 1200 is a total dog.

<comment> old-gregg "Total dog" for being 7-13% slower-per-thread but offering twice as many cores? This is ridiculous. I am typing this on a i5 Mac with 2C/4T and the difference in using common office applications (browser, Excel, etc) vs 4C/8T i7 is _insane_. Just using newegg.com is borderline impossible with just a few tabs open unless you have 4 non-SMT threads.

Desktop computing is actually pretty good at utilizing many cores these days: the booting process, starting non-trivial applications, using full-disk encryption, running multiple tabs in a browser (or just having a browser open with a few tabs + something else), in all of these conditions 4c/4t CPU will provide tangible, perceivable difference. 2c/4t CPUs are obsolete and I wouldn't recommend one even for an entry-level computer.

<comment><USER19> My experience has been the opposite. For running a browser, I'll take a faster dual core over a slower quad core. Simultaneous tabs are of little use to me if I can't scroll smoothly through Amazon.com.

<comment><USER26> It not being the ideal choice for your specific use-case does not in any way make it a "total dog".

Just unsuited for you.

<comment><USER19> I suggest you actually read the article and take a look at the ST performance/price graph that I was referencing. The 1200 is an outlier.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


24 hours with an Electric BMW through BMW's Zipcar competitor in the Bay Area - <AUTHOR> http://benguild.com/post/58461622635/ev-adventure-24-hours-with-an-electric-vehicle-what

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR Ultimately, it seems like EV's are awesome as long as where you're going has a charging station and that you can actually make it there.

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting article, but is it just me or did the narrative jump and loop several times?</comment>


The First Ever Synthetic Biology Kickstarter Is About Growing 'Glowing Plants' - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/glowing-plants/

<comment><USER2> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5596212></comment>


London, Moscow and St. Petersburg taxi accepts Bitcoin (and ~15 usd off) - <AUTHOR> https://wheely.com/invite/ix1y2

<comment><AUTHOR> If you login on the website (www.wheely.com and click "Book online"), there is now a "Pay with Bitcoin" button in the account section to top up your balance.

</comment><comment><USER2> Using Coinbase, like Overstock.com</comment>


Scientists Create Rare Fifth Form of Matter in Space - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/63999-fifth-form-of-matter-created.html <comment><USER2> Here's the Wikipedia article on laser cooling: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cooling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cooling)

Its explanation is a bit too surface level for me. Anyone have more details on the mechanism used for this experiment? Would they have used Doppler cooling like is sometimes done on Rb-85?

<comment><USER3> Author here. Yes, Doppler Cooling is the first step used in the experiment, in a Magneto Optical Trap [0]. It is followed by Polarization Gradient Cooling [1] to overcome the Doppler limit. Atoms are still way too "hot" after this step, so they are then transferred to a purely magnetical trap and cooled down further via forced evaporation [2].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto- optical_trap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneto-optical_trap)

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooling_(atomic_ph...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooling_\(atomic_physics\))

<comment><USER2> Thanks!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> why does bombarding tightly-packed rubidium-87 atoms with lasers cool them to minus 273.15 degrees Celsius?

<comment><USER5> The simplest way to explain it is this:

Atoms can only absorb very specific and exact frequencies of light. But because the atoms are moving, the frequency of light, as seen by the atom, varies a lot.

If you only shine light that is slightly below the lowest frequency of light the atom can absorb, only those atoms that are moving toward the light (and thus "see" a slightly higher frequency) are able to absorb that light.

Then the atom emits that light - which is always at the exact frequency. In the process you basically "steal" energy from the atoms motion, and emit it back out as ever so slightly higher frequency light.

Since the atoms are now moving slower they are colder. You keep doing this until you've gotten as much out of the process as you can.

<comment><USER6> So do the moving atoms "see" different frequencies because of doppler effects, or something else?

<comment><USER5> Yes, doppler effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are way more than five phases of matter...

<comment><USER8> Please do educate us.

<comment><USER9> The Bose-Einstein condensate that the article talks about is one of many low- temperature states. There are a few kinds of high-energy states too... the most famous ones being electron degenerate matter (found in white dwarfs) and neutron degenerate matter (found in neutron stars).

I think a good starting point is here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_matter)

<comment><USER10> Better link (which was found in your link):

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11>
            When groups of atoms are cooled to such unfathomably low temperatures, they stop moving as individuals and meld into one big "super atom." Tens of thousands of atoms suddenly become indistinguishable from one another, slowly vibrating on a uniform wavelength that can, theoretically, pick up the tiniest gravitational disturbances around them.

Why should this be called "super atom", just because all atoms behave the same? If I have a bag of indistinguishable rice corns, they don't suddenly become a single "super rice corn".

<comment><USER5> > If I have a bag of indistinguishable rice corns

Ah, but they actually are distinguishable. If you checked them, their size will vary slightly, the exact position of the atoms making them up with be different, etc, etc.

If you tried, you would be able to find _something_ different about every single grain of rice - even if you had to check at the atomic level.

The thing about this condensate is the atoms _ARE_ truly indistinguishable. Their motion, energy, absolutely everything about this is exactly identical.

But what _really_ makes them special is that they stay that way - they all move together. (At least until they get enough energy to break apart their bond.)

It's that last part that makes them into this "super atom" \- they are all bonded together.</comment></comment>


Becoming a CTO - <AUTHOR> https://juokaz.com/blog/becoming-a-cto <comment><USER4> I'm going to sound like an old fart, but it might be better to wait to write a blog post like that after you've spent some time experiencing engineering management in depth. It's very easy when capital is flowing freely and you've managed a team of 5 engineers to think that it's always going to be like that.

Ever been through an acquisition where 50% of the team was to be let go and you had to decide who and then tell them? Kill off a product after the team had almost completed it? Perform a lay off when times got bad? Give a serious, reasoned, estimated answer to the question (from the CEO): "How fast could we rewrite our entire code base from $FOO to Java?" Fire someone 20 years older than you and wonder quietly to yourself if he'd find another job? Manage more than a handful of engineers? Figure out how to outsource part of your development to India for financial reasons? Deal with a rapidly expanding customer base with creaking code? Manage a multi-million dollar budget when VCs _aren 't_ throwing money at you? Handle alleged sexual harassment? Spend hours and hours flying from customer to customer to explain your technology?

The 'pick which technology' to use part is easy and fun. Now go make that work in a real environment with real constraints.

My advice on becoming a CTO: learn how to write. You'll be spending a very large amount of time communicating your ideas.

<comment><USER5> As an old fart myself, and meaning absolutely no disrespect to anyone, I don't generally think of small startup CTOs when I hear the term CTO. I think of medium+ corporations where the CTO is at the top of significantly larger personnel structure than a company with 10-50 people. In my experience a CTO position at a small company is much more comparable to a mid-level manager or director slot at a larger organization.

Again, not intending to disrepect anyone, but that was my impression when reading this article -- I didn't feel like I was really listening to what my idea of a CTO is.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's very true. Perhaps a good place to start is by not calling yourself CTO.

<comment><USER6> In that case there are no C level offices for startups because the CEO for a 5 person startup doesn't have the same responsibilities as the CEO for Leidos.

I think it's tempting for people to just say, well yes that's true, but there is no great line that is crossed that makes the distinction obvious.

<comment><USER7> It would be revolutionary for startups to start their org chart at the bottom, rather than the top. Programmer and BizDev, who get promoted as the company grows.

<comment><USER8> So you could get a job as Software dev 3 at Google for 250k, or as Programmer1 as a startup for 75k at a new startup.. why would you do the startup?

Let's face it.. title is one of the currencies of a startup. You want me to work for below market wage? Sure. I want equity to profit if we succeed, and I want a title that keeps me from having people hired over my head as we grow.

<comment><USER9> _" and I want a title that keeps me from having people hired over my head as we grow"_

I don't think that just a title will protect you. If you can handle managing 5 people but don't have the skills to manage 50 people, it's not going to be in the company's best interests to keep you on as the CTO. So you'll be offered the following options:

\- Accept a demotion and report to the new CTO

\- Be fired from your job and get replaced by the new CTO

If the company wants to avoid this unpleasantness, they can call your role something other than CTO, e.g., "Director of Development". Then, if the company grows, they can either promote you to CTO or hire a CTO to be your boss, depending on how promising you are.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand what the advantage is to have a lower title in your examples though: if you were CTO and someone gets inserted above you then your choices for your resume in your two scenarios are (CTO, then Director) or (only CTO, left company), which are both better than the two scenarios if you didn't have the CTO title (where it would say Director only).

If your title is Director someone might reasonably even assume there was a CTO above you at the tiny company, and you were a "director" or "vp" by being actually the absolute lowest man on the totem pole.

<comment><USER7> Title inflation is a thing making "CTO" almost meaningless, as documented elsewhere. Technical cofounder skills are not the same as CTO skills, so either they can be promoted into the gig when the company grows big enough to need CxOs or they can hire someone with the experience, desire, or greater aptitude.

<comment><USER10> My latter point was that widespread title inflation has the property that if you "defect" and don't have title inflation it has an actual negative effect on your future employment since it is nearly impossible for a random observer to know whether or not there was title inflation at your company.

As meaningless as "CTO" is, having a title worse than that could be seen as non-meaningless as a _negative_ signal.

<comment><USER7> I think "founding programmer" or similar would counteract negative signals. It would certainly be more accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "If the team wants to do TDD, or pair programming, or staging servers - <USER2> get it all approved by the CTO. It's up to him to consider the bigger impact of those changes."

As a CTO, my team knows I do not need to approve what the team wants in regards to TDD or how many environments they feel they need. We operate in a mode of "do whats best" and engineers smarter than me sure as shit dont need me to rubber stamp approval of writing unit tests. I absolutely create an environment that encourages high quality products and a robust testing process. How they accomplish that is up to them.

<comment><USER12> I think the more abstract point the author was trying to make with that statement was that teams should be allowed to define what they want to do, _but_ the CTO is the one who should be keeping an eye on the impacts of those decisions with respect to the rest of the organization.

A good CTO is a bullshit deflector. And sometimes that bullshit is in the form of "Why should an engineer have to consider decades-long maintenance timelines including projects he or she isn't even associated with?" Sometimes the CTO needs to say "No" to a proposal, but the benefit to the engineer is the rest of the time they're isolated from having to think about impacts they don't want to.*

*All of this is only applicable to orgs past a certain size

<comment><USER11> Fair point. I initially interpreted it as overly draconian, perhaps incorrectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > I hate environments where the technology department is simply implementing > what was envisioned by others. It might as well be an outsourced development > team because it becomes independent of the decision making process.

I'd argue that the technology department should be very independent and empowered when it comes to the _technology_ decision making process. I'm less convinced that that's true for the product decision making process. I've worked in places where Product Managers and designers wrote all the requirements and dictated the look and feel down to the pixel, tossing it over the wall to developers to implement. I've worked in a place without independent, dedicated product professionals, where software engineering decided what the product should be. Both extremes have major weaknesses. You have to find the right spot on the spectrum between the two that works for the company and mix of talent you have. It's not all or nothing.

<comment><USER14> As usual, that gray area in the middle is where you find the right answer.

I am a product manager - I spend some days arguing, civilly but intensely with the architects and engineering teams on what should be done and why.

This conflict - these "battles" so to speak, ultimately lead to the best results IMO. I push for something, the engineers push for something else, and in the end we end up building the best possible product for the customer - it's both what they want and technically sound.

Keep in mind when I say this I don't mean an immature argument calling people names etc. - it's intense but it's always respectable and all parties know and recognize that the best idea wins - regardless of who it comes from.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely this. The best decisions come out of "My gut reaction is X", "Have you considered Y?", "No, I hadn't because it's outside my area of expertise. What about X'?", "That takes into account Y; agreed, let's do that."

<comment><USER13> Just a nit pick. I think the good IDEAS can come from that process, but the best DECISIONS come out of: "The data (from market research, A/B testing, etc.) clearly show that out of X, Y, and Z, X improves our KPI more."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "The CTO must protect the technology team from becoming a pure execution arm > for ideas without tending to its own needs and its own ideas."

As a CTO myself, I strongly disagree with this. Yes, a dev team needs to tend to it's own ideas, but no, it shouldn't be making product decisions. You should have product and design teams that tease out user problems and come up with solutions. In that sense, the dev team does simply implement the ideas of the company. They still make _technical_ decisions of course, but not product or UX decisions.

<comment><USER11> As a CTO, I disagree with your disagreement :)

Engineers dont want a "script for implementation". They want to exhibit autonomy and creativity to the product as much as everyone else, especially product managers. I am not saying they should be product managers in a vacuum, but every good CTO knows the value of ownership and autonomy of a product is extremely rewarding to engineers.

<comment><USER16> I agree with both of you and tensor :)

Having dedicated people understanding what users want, what competitors are doing and what are the future directions of the market is probably necessary and worth dedicating serious time to.

It is just how people organize teams right now that seems a little broken; a Product Manager and 'their' team. This leads to the Engineers who like to innovate becoming bored and finding smart ways to get out of the 'typingpool'. This innovative talent is really necessary to scale product teams though, e.g. spotting common patterns across code bases. With that loss in innovation companies suddenly find a comparable feature that took 2 weeks taking 2 months.

Also as technology evolves new features previously impossible become possible. A Product Manager probably will not see this.

Perhaps there is a more 'ownership' heavy way of organizing Engineers. Something a bit more democratic like having a pool of ideas coming from Product Designers and Engineers. Self forming teams can come together to deliver whatever motivates them.

<comment><USER13> 1\. There's plenty of room to innovate on the implementation side. PMs don't tell you what algorithms to use or how to lay out the data in memory.

2\. Not every engineer yearns to be a Product Manager. Sure, many want to make product decisions but don't want to do the other necessary work that comes with the role (like market research, metrics and analytics, managing the schedule and budget, writing PRDs, communicating with customers and partners, dealing with Legal, making sure the user manual is accurate, coordinating releases with ops and tech support, etc.) I think some techies think being a PM means merely sitting in your cube dreaming up a feature and saying "This Shall Be".

3\. Good PMs most definitely need to stay on top of technology as it evolves. They need to know their platforms' capabilities and when new things become possible.

<comment><USER11> 1> Yes there is plenty of room to innovate on implementation, but they still want input to the scope of what they are implementing.

2> Nobody is saying they should be product managers, I am just suggesting they want more direct input to the shape of the product itself (not suggesting ALL engineers either)

3> Agreed, and PMs should continue to be good at this, its a core part of their role, understanding the ecosystem

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17>
       Being a CTO doesn't mean you are the craziest hacker on the team.
       In actuality, writing code is probably the last thing you will be doing.

Not entirely true. This is a typical "You Mileage May Vary" scenario, in actuality. From all the small startup teams (headcount less than 15) that I've worked at in the past decade, CTO must be the role who leads in coding - <USER3> almost all the cases the first version of the software product was 100% done by CTOs because small agile teams don't have the luxury to be managing instead of doing and EVERYONE (even CEOs) wears a lot of hats.

After bootstrap and rounds of fundings, things will change for sure. But CTOs at very early startups are definitely more about doing less about managing IMMO.

<comment><USER18> I don't think this is a YMMV, but rather we're all lacking a proper, consistent definition of what a CTO is and does. Many in the the comments are coming from the idea of a C-suite officer of a large company, which I think is proper. I think a lot of the use of CTO / VP of Engineering / Director at a lot of startups is just some ego-stroking type behavior. Your claim of being a CTO at a 10 person startup is not likely to be getting you a job as a CTO of a mid-market firm because you're not really a CTO, you're some kind of architect at best.

<comment><USER17> The definition of CTO is evolving as the company evolves. The same company at different stages requires its CTO to be in different role, as you mentioned CTO in a 10-person startup is a different role than a CTO in Fortune 500 company.

<comment><USER18> For the purposes of discussion, we will not get anywhere fruitful if we say "Oh, it can be anything you want it to" \- again, I contend that a CTO at a 10-person startup is not an actual CTO but some kind of team lead / architect. It's a pointless name as it does not convey what it typically does and serves only to act as some status signal.

Instead of saying "The definition of CTO is evolving" which is rather contradictory, a definition to make something distinct and clear, it would be better to frame it as that person's role is evolving, and that their title of CTO is not indicative of their actual role.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "If you ever find yourself writing a blog post on why PHP sucks, you are not ready."

About 4 articles down the article is about why PHP doesn't suck. This amuses me for some reason.

<comment><USER20> It's amusing because it's absurd. CTOs write articles about technology choices all the time, and sometimes its even tactical.

If I thought slagging PHP in a blog would get us more hires, I'd do it without hesitation.

<comment><USER21> I can't for the life of me think of a reason this kind of blog post would make me want to join a company. If anything it shows the opposite quality of a CTO as mentioned in the article. Use what is suited to your needs, don't worry about appealing to the tech crowd. After all, even if PHP is shit, it's not your problem. Let us handle implementation of what you need, we will (or our lead dev will) help you understand pros and cons to certain technologies. Besides, for every article written about why PHP sucks, there's at least 5 PHP devs looking for work :P

<comment><USER20> So... are you asking me for examples of CTOs of successful companies who have written tech articles promoting one type of tech because another is bad?

I can do that, if you really couldn't do it yourself. It's not uncommon at all.

Like I said, I don't do it because I don't think it would help. But in some cases, it can definitely help. How many startups use their dedication to a specific (incrementally more modern) tech stack as a perk while hiring? Quite a few, and these often have subtly disparaging remarks baked in. And I've absolutely had success hiring and growing my team by explaining why we use Clojure over stock java whenever possible.

<comment><USER21> Nah not at all. But I am saying that it's not gonna sway my decision when you bash a technology amidst many other companies that have successfully used the same technology. It just shows a lack of vision imo. My comment wasn't targeted at yours specifically, but was a follow up on the topic.

and imo explanation of why you use one technology over another is not equal to just a "PHP sucks!" blog post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Being CTO/CIO twice in my carrier, being protector of my small dev-realm almost fulltime, I completely agree with that article! so, probably it's wrong somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER23> Matt Tucker wrote a little blog [0] about being CTO. He went from co-founder to public company CTO over 15 years...

[0] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-flavors-being-cto- matt-t...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-flavors-being-cto-matt-tucker)

</comment><comment><USER24>
      Sometime down the road legacy applications become expensive to
      manage, but rewrites almost always deliver zero value to the
      customer. It's about balancing development efforts.

Well said. What is the guarantee that the rewrite would be relatively free from technical debt? I've seen several 100K lines of code being produced in rewrites that add absolutely no value -- neither in terms of performance, reliability, maintenance or even code readability.

<comment><USER12> I think there is some value in "someone who has spent billable hours deeply touching the currently running system is still employed at the company." You can have maintenance updates & docs as numerous as you want, but I'd still be terrified of running a production system I don't have trusted nuts-and-bolts expertise in-house for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Juozas Kaziukėnas is a good conference speaker. And as a good conference speaker oversimplifies some things to sell himself.

Being a CTO also means that "age" matters. Not because you are not smart but because you haven't worked with people enough to become a CTO. A person on his 20s or early 30, maybe has lots of technical experience already but definitely not the social skills to lead an organisation.

I remember I was interviewed once by a 25 years old "CTO" in a suit and really it was a nightmare!

> I've sat in a few roundtables with fellow CTOs: This is kinda of what I > don't like. We the "CTOs" gather to say "our" things and write blog posts > about it.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a CTO of a small start-up my neck is a little strained from nodding so much at this article. I really agree with... sorry I have an email with our largest customer to get back to.

</comment><comment><USER27> > "Why are you stuck with this old version, why haven't you rewritten it with > React.js?" Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's not a great idea. Sometime > down the road legacy applications become expensive to manage, but rewrites > almost always deliver zero value to the customer. It's about balancing > development efforts. Building a team of people who only want to touch the > freshly baked technologies is not sustainable.

I wish more people would realize this.

</comment><comment><USER28> > but rewrites almost always deliver zero value to the customer.

I disagree. Sure no immediate value, but in the long run? You could argue certain rewrites would mean faster product development, less bug proneness, happier developers. All of these deliver value to your customers.

<comment><USER29> Depends on the size and reasons for the rewrite. I am Director of Eng. at a 85 people startup (funny how that sounds), and last April we released "version 2" of our platform/website [1]. We basically threw away a huge chunk of the code that was developed by the technical founder, myself and another dev, and replaced it with a fully scalable architecture.

When the company I work for was being started, a technical advisor (who had sold his company months before) told us not to worry a lot about the first codebase, because we were going to throw that away after some time. I am deffinitely sure even what we have now, will get obsolete in a couple of years (two at most)

For this reason, I think having a good planned rewrite (even if it is underestimated) can be good. I think the important part is understanding _why_ the rewrite is performed, and be sure that it is done for the right reasons.

      [1] http://nerds.kueski.com/the-path-to-kueski-2-0/

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So then would the true top "Engineering" role just be lead dev? This is the role I am more interested in. Having to keep up with the state of the field _to me_ as an engineer/CS is A: more fun, and B: more rewarding.

If anything this blog post (along with others) just keeps confirming that CTO is something I never want to be.

Edit: I should also mention that it is practice at my current company that our leads basically are the ones that consider the balance of implementation details and whether we do rewrites vs. staged refactoring. Not the CTO. This definitely seems like more of an engineering call.

<comment><USER30> Even if you don't want to be a CTO, you're better off knowing what the CTO role does. Part of how the World War 2 era German military worked was the idea that subordinates would understand how to do the job of people two levels above him, so that he could understand the intent of the orders he received and carry that out rather than the letter. If you also want to have high levels of autonomy, you need similar abilities.

<comment><USER21> Irrelevant to what I asked. I understand the role. And I can safely say I don't want it. What is the top engineering role?

<comment><USER31> Lead developer, architect, senior developer, fellow... it depends on company. It could be also CTO in some cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If what it takes to become a CTO is understanding all of this, then I'm ready. The only problem for me is that I'm not one. Oh well, back to refactoring unit tests.

</comment><comment><USER33> This article hit too close to home. It hits a lot of points which are all-too- true about many CT positions and how if they're not set up for success, how can the engineering team (and eventually the rest of the company company) also possibly be successful?

</comment><comment><USER34> I hoped to get some real-life experience from the blogpost, literally blah what I read. With all respect to the author, though. I have no idea how that sort of posts are taking higher than 250 points nowadays. That's the question.

</comment><comment><USER35> Love posts like these. My friend & I started a podcast to help engineers learn from other CTOs.

Check out StartupCTO.io. Would love any feedback here or on Twitter @startupctoio

</comment><comment><USER36> > I've sat in a few roundtables with fellow CTOs

"Sorry guys, the event for tonight is cancelled, turns out the tables we were to sit at are rectangular."

</comment><comment><USER37> This guy gets it.</comment>


Diary of a Failed Startup: Aftermath - <AUTHOR> http://diffle-history.blogspot.com/2008/12/aftermath.html

<comment><USER2> Regarding getting any type of programming job after doing it yourself for a time, it's not very difficult to do.

I didn't have any difficulty getting a job at a billion dollar company after doing my shareware business for three years or so, after my father was laid off (I lived with my parents, being in early 20's).

Basically, after Startup School 2007, I was thinking of joining a YC startup I really liked (Auctomatic) and they seemed to think I was the #1 candidate.

Being rejected from YCombinator regarding growing my app, and looking at that YC startup I mentioned, I made my eBay-related program free to use instead of paid (because I was thinking I would join that YC startup, or if not, I would look at some more in California), to eliminate any guilt of not supporting it as much as I could while I would be moving on to something else. I also wanted to focus on web based instead of desktop software.

Then, my father got laid off around the same time, and while I was helping my father find a job, I realized that he wasn't getting any responses. So besides creating his resume, as I went through job search sites submitting his, I thought, I might as well submit my own to a couple of companies directly as well, having just shut off my income by making my software free, and now feeling like I should stay in the area while my dad got back up on his feet. I had no problem getting interviews after only applying to a couple of big local companies. My dad finally got one, and I went with him, and they did not want him and instead wanted me. The guy asked me to come back and meet with his two bosses, and I did, though I cut that meeting short to go another interview. I was called and asked to come back again on a third interview, and to continue that interview, as well as possibly meet some executive from New York (their headquarters). (LOL) So my dad got only one other interview in those two months, which I didn't go with him to. :)

The Fortune 100 company that gave me an offer first, I accepted, and declined to meet with that other company. One of the few places I applied was Google, and a Google recruiter called after I had already accepted another offer and said that Google wouldn't fly me in to California after my phone interview with a Google developer, and he thought my credentials were great and that I should try again in March 2008. Basically, I planned on reviewing the TopCoder pages on algorithms and such before the call, but my grandparents "went missing" and my dad and I went looking for them when their alarm went off, so by the time I got home, I was exhausted. Then my parents were in the same room as I, so it was tough to struggle through the phone interview with Google. Worse yet, I was just getting so tired from the interview that in the end, when I likely correctly answered that an algorithm took big O of "n log n" time, the interviewer sounded really excited and surprised and asked me how I got it. I said I don't know, and he kept asking me. I said, I just knew that's one of the common possibilities, and that the algorithm grows faster (is slower) than linear time but grows slower (is a faster algorithm) than exponential time.

I started (at the company I accepted the offer) directly in a real position, while other people I know (and my age) had just gotten their B.S. in Computer Science or Business degrees and then had "Trainee" job titles for about 8 months, even though I was the same age as them (different department) and had about an Associate's Degree at the time.

I quickly found that people do not think the same way as startup founders. The company was very conservative, and also I was the youngest by far of anyone else in my department.

My favorite part of that experience was trying to bring up awareness of the iPhone. I remember, at the urging of the guy who hired me, showing off my iPhone last December to an executive who was walking by, who seemed interested. I worked with the guy who hired me to explain to him and others the difference between web-based and native apps, as well as WAP, and different ways this could be implemented. As well as why the iPhone was a better platform than anything else. Also, getting our IT department to register for the iPhone Enterprise Beta as soon as it came out. And, talking about having API's and and one place to render, so that the same content would simply be displayed differently, depending on the capability of the device-- regular phone, iPhone, laptop, 24" monitor. There seemed to a lot of backlash at the time, but then I noticed some of my ideas had become some other person's ideas, such as that of the guy who hired me. I created mockups of what an app might look like on the iPhone.

This company's policy was to buy before build, instead of develop in-house (which made sense) so they got a mobile development shop to build some ideas, with the two guys--the guy who hired me, and the guy in IT I told to sign up for the iPhone Enterprise Beta--running the show, and I was not involved in any way.

My favorite moment was washing my hands in the first floor bathroom late one day, around August, when a person started talking to me. Oh, it's the CIO! He let me know they're going to be pursuing some iPhone and Blackberry apps, and using it and such. I realized therefore that it was the same guy who saw me show him my iPhone in December, and that he must have remembered me, and I asked him of that. He says, yup! And I reply, ( this is still very funny to me ), "oh I heard that you were meeting with this person, and that person, and this person." He looked at me with a blank stare. I asked, "Did you like those mockups in the presentation?" He said, yes! I said, "I made those." Another blank stare. It was just funny because the executive was trying to surprise me about remembering me from a year ago, and I surprised him by basically telling him I made those mockups he saw as well as knowing everything about his meeting.

Of course even though I bought the iPhone and Macbook Pro with my own money and explained things to my manager and stuff, created mock ups, and presentations, I didn't get any credit whatsoever. Another thing, when I was talking with executives (for some reason, I was originally sitting not with coworkers, but near an executive who was in charge of other executives, one of whom was the second most important in terms of strategy to the CIO), and I ALWAYS brought up the iPhone project and ALWAYS mentioned the guy-who-hired- me's name. Apparently, the guy-who-hired-me only sometimes mentioned me. And when I told the guy-who-hired-me that I had run-ins with executives, he instantly asked, "oh did you mention me? did you mention me?" I thought to myself, doesn't he want to hear my cool story? Why is this more important to him? I said, uh yeah, I always do. Lesson learned--next time, I will only mention people who actually do anything useful. I already had a path to executives, I did not need someone else stealing my ideas. Oh, and the project to get iPhone/mobile awareness started out as both of us working together, of course with him having zero knowledge about anything, but as soon as it go interest, the person asked me multiple times, in the presence of another executive (yes, there are too many executives), that he should probably do it... I said.. uh.. what... my current manager has full support of me using part of time on stuff related to the iPhone... why do you ask? However, this happened a couple of times, and always within earshot of an executive, like this wasn't a 50-50 effort.

So in September, I left to get my Bachelor's in Computer Science and Mathematics while learning iPhone development (I signed up for a related class that was originally an independent study meant for development for another platform, but eventually everyone switched to iPhone development by November!) I also took a class on Adobe CS3, as well, of course, three real CS and Math classes.

I think corporate was fun, but regardless, I did not want to stay because they were not going to develop my ideas, but contract them out to a vendor. I couldn't care less about credit; it was that day to day, I wasn't working on cool stuff. As far as ACTUAL WORK I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING, that actually started getting fun and productive when my department finally moved everyone together instead of all over the place, a few weeks before I was quitting. However, I wanted to get my degree and have time to work on my ideas.

Since I remember you posting here as long as I have, and I remember you going through what you did, I just wanted to congratulate you and tell you what I've experienced as well.

Also, I've found that some negative things people have posted here about certain YC startup's hiring practices/treatment of other people are true, though I think I've only officially applied to a couple over the years. I really have to give the hats off to Auctomatic though for asking me to create something in smalltalk for them, regardless of my degree, and these people had gone to Cambridge and/or had deferred accepting attending MIT.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an amazing writeup. Incredibly honest.

It would be great if you could do an as honest writeup after some time(possible a couple of months). I would be interested in thoughts along two lines:

1\. Maybe working Google will not be that great. They sure do have very smart ppl - but I guess you know by now that startups are a different beast. There was a reason you went into the startup world - maybe because you found more meaning in the complete responsibility a startup endows you, and probably that wont exist in Google - nor the adrenaline. Maybe you need to balance that 'meaning' in your job with having fun - your starup was all about meaning and probably too hard to be fun so a stint at Google looks exciting. Maybe you will crave meaning very soon, in which case Google might not be the best option.

2\. "And I have no cofounder, so I'd be doing everything myself until I could afford employees, and then I'd have to build a company culture. That will be no 'fun'" Maybe you can still find a cofounder(maybe in Google). I am not sure, but I think there should be a way to do startups while keeping the fun intact. One thing that I have seen is that big companies afford you a default(big) social circle which a lot of times is the source of the fun you have. (Also startups typicall dont have cute HR's ;)). But maybe you can still create a big enough social group by just hanging out with other startup folks and have as much fun.

Just some random thoughts. Feel free to (not) reply.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1.) It's possible, though if that happens, I probably wouldn't write about it because I don't want to bad-mouth my employer. I also got the impression that there's a lot of cool, meaningful stuff going on in the Googleplex, but we just don't see most of it because products typically take a few years to mature. Think of all the stealth-mode startups that are out there building things you've never heard of, then imagine that going on inside one organization.

2.) Similarly, one of my reasons for choosing Google was indeed to meet potential new cofounders, but I wouldn't recruit them directly away from work (I don't think I legally can - I'm guessing that Google will have a no-solicit agreement like every other tech place I've worked at). It's more to get to know them as friends, so that if 5-10 years down the line, we're both getting really bored with everything going on at the Googleplex, there's a big pool of people that I'd like to work with.

<comment><USER4> People leaving at the same time to start a company isn't solicitation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      But if I were to do another startup, I'd be stuck with it for the next 4-10 years,
      it'd have to be profitable within about 2 to avoid running out of money,

<SNIP>

      I might be able to pull it off and get rich,
      but it'd eat up all of my twenties, probably all my friends,
      and possibly all my sanity. Not worth it.

This is one of the things that i ponder upon as well.

A lot of people would say (and correctly so) it becomes more difficult later on to start your own venture, but at this point (I'm 27) i just can't convince myself to work like crazy for the next 2-3 years and possibly spend the prime of my life in front of the screen.

I guess it's just a question what you want from life at that point in time. (Great work/money/time for other interests/good social life). Obviously all of it together would be nice :-), but till then got to be selective.

<comment><USER6> I'm also twenty-seven, and there's nothing I'd rather do than have a go with getting my own business running. And the thing is, that doesn't mean spending all of your life in front of a monitor. Spending time out in the real world, talking with other people, is a vital activity for anybody starting a company.

It's also a great way to make friends with similar interests, which leads itself to all kinds of fun.

Too many people spend a frankly stupid amount of time worrying about wasting their youth, or make up for it by spending their twenties in a drunken stupor.

Think about it. Would you rather hit thirty, and have built a few things that you can be really proud of, and take a shot at making some real dosh, or just look back on a bunch of parties?

<comment><USER5> I would prefer to hit thirty having done car rallies in Himalayas, knowing how to fly a plane, and building up some decent software as well. A bunch of 'memorable' parties would be an added bonus. :-) (And i think i should re-read my comments before posting if they give the impression that the author wrote them in a drunker stupor.)

Well i do not believe in the theory of one size fits all. If running a business works well for you at this point of time, it's great and wish you success in it. I guess i need some more convincing before i finally take the plunge. (Yeah i know there is never a right time)

tom_rath put it across very well in his comment above: "You're not wasting time if you genuinely enjoy how it is being spent."

<comment><USER6> I think we're on the same page; I don't want my epitaph to read, "Well, he sure worked a hell of a lot." So, I mis-interpreted your post... by quite a bit. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> its now been one year since we officially closed up shop at my first startup, and I've now been working at a big co for a year as well. I felt a deep sense of loss after we closed down, while the financial pinch was very real, what burns me to this day is the fact that we did not launch, because it leaves a gaping "what if" void.

I feel fortunate to be working on my next startup in my off hours, and not having any looming moonlighting conflicts (lesson learned) this time around.

A lot of the frustration I felt around the first failure motivated me to get back in there with a new startup. Big or small, rich or poor there is nothing like working on something that is truly yours. The sirens call to entrepreneurship was more than I could resist.

thanks for sharing your experience here and go kill it at google for a while until the siren calls you back.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was a well-written, very honest, write-up.

<comment> puzzle-out Not only can this guy write code, but his prose is fluent and insightful. A pleasure to read such a well written post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> jonathan -- thanks for the writeups & best of luck at google. you'll find some good future cofounder material there. swing by dropbox HQ sometime :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'm excited to finally get to Silicon Valley - a lot of the folks I've met through various YC meetups have all moved out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why didn't you let it run on auto-pilot?

(It was a games aggregator, right?)

<comment><AUTHOR> It was a game creation engine, and we didn't complete it to a degree where I would've felt comfortable launching it.

We also did a Flash games hosting site, as sort of a warmup, that was live and had some traffic. I left the decision on whether to keep that running up to my cofounder, since he was paying the server bills, and he chose to shut it down. I think it was moderately unprofitable (as in, it costs $80/month to operate and generated about $60/month in revenue) - it probably could have been profitable had we downgraded to a shared webhost or VPS, but he didn't want the hassle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> congratulations on the new job!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks!

<comment><USER12> Hm, it sounds like you may end up sitting near me (same department at least).

Hope I run into you, sounded like you did cool stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


Possible Anne Boleyn portrait found using facial recognition software - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/16/anne-boleyn-portrait-found-using-facial-recognition-software

<comment><USER2> Something to note.

This suffers from the same problem cancer screening does, namely an absurdly low probability of false positives still ends up with high error rates.

They really need to mention how many paintings were tested overall.</comment>


Facebook Just Changed Your Email Without Asking - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5921085/facebook-just-changed-your-email-without-asking++heres-how-to-fix-it

<comment><USER2> Earlier discussion, from two days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433>

Here's some discussion and a link describing how to fix it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157589></comment>


Ask HK: How to reverse engineer a letter or postage? - <AUTHOR> Say you receive in the mail a package shipped from somewhere, how can you find where is this somewhere?
Specifically I'd like to know which Chinese factory is building the sunglasses I bought from an American brand. I know they come from China, but don't know from where.
Any suggestion much appreciated. <comment><USER2> They are possibly built to specification by multiple factories in multiple cities. A particular item may not be traceable to where it was built.</comment>


Why Millennials Quit - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/karmabot/why-millennials-quit-f604c957308a <comment><USER2> Most work these days is done on a temporary per project basis so really employee longevity is far less important than it used to be. Imagine code management before there was even CVS much less Git. Our practices and tools from git to agile enable us to use completely temporary teams so the leverage employees used to use to achieve longevity is largely gone unless you have some serious technical debt like you still don't use git.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. The combination of gig economy and remote work is the future.

Atm, I'm not sure if Karmabot would work for temporary teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of most common and toxic cultures on tech fits with this article: Google's "free lunches foosbal tables long hours" pleasure island approach. Pat them on the back, give them a lunch just for participating, make them work easy more than 40 hours for free.

I much prefer a normal 9-5 job that doesn't give out free perks and expects results, but lets you have your free time after work.

Not all millennials need coddled. Some of us were given a shovel ad kids instead of a participation award and told to work until it's finished. Hire those ones and leave the rest to the companies that attract people who actually think a free meal worth their freedom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point, people are different. The article refers to the studies, which quality and reliability are obv debatable.</comment></comment>


Piketty's Capital: Wrong Theory/Destructive Program - <AUTHOR> http://georgereismansblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/pikettys-capital-wrong_28.html <comment><USER2> > Over the course of several generations, the US government has taxed away > trillions upon trillions of dollars that otherwise would have been saved and > invested and thereby added to the capital of the American economy.

I'm going to stop right there, because that's the problem.

If capital saved by the wealthy were invested in value-creating, productive pursuits, there would be no problem.

The problem is that investing in value creation is hard. You have to play angel or VC, more or less. You have to understand your domains, pick your investments, do due diligence, etc. There's also a limited number of good investments available at any given times. The best are either oversubscribed or very difficult to recognize and require contrarianism... and contrarianism is not a magic bullet either. Some contrarian investments are incredible, while others are contrarian because they're bad.

It's _so_ much easier to invest in rent-seeking and debt issuance. It takes far less time and far less domain expertise. It also generates -- at least in theory -- more predictable returns. (The 2008 crash occurred when multiple classes of rentier investments suddenly became unpredictable and did things that violated model assumptions... like millions of mortgages defaulting in unison.)

It's easier to invest in schemes to ratchet up real estate and commodity prices to extract rents from the rest of the economy, or to simply lend money at interest. The former has created phenomena like real estate rising while wages are not. The latter has created a series of credit bubbles and a system of debt-based indentured servitude.

At some point private savings seems to become a net social ill and lead us back to feudalism. Or at least that's what things look like today.

Everything is going up except wages (across much of the economy) because money is flowing into rent extraction, not industrial expansion.

Where is all this investment in new productivity?

P. S.

The most unrealistic thing about Ayn Rand is her depiction of businessmen. Characters reminiscent of her heroes are so extraordinarily rare I can name the ones I know of on one hand. The vast majority of "captains of industry" more closely resemble her villains: short-term pragmatic influence peddlers, boring bean counters who harbor a vague hatred for the genuinely creative, political wheeler-dealers, second handers, sociopathic exploiters, ...

<comment><AUTHOR> "I'm going to stop right there, because that's the problem."

... and in consequence you're going to repeat Piketty's assertions, which are pretty much demolished in the article you haven't bothered to read.

Also, you're wrong in your description of Rand's portrayal of businessmen as unrealistic. The majority of businessmen in Atlas Shrugged (and, in fact, the Fountainhead) were as you describe: looters, second-handers, rent-seekers, statists and sociopaths. The _exceptions_ were her heroes, who were as rare in her novels as they are in reality today.

<comment><USER2> Everything is going up but wages, which are flat or falling in real terms, and almost everyone I know is laboring beneath an insurmountable mountain of debt with no hope of ever paying it off (since wages are flat).

What's wrong with this picture?

It's oddly and ironically Soviet... like back when the USSR's crops were failing and yet Pravda proudly trumpeted ever-increasing crop yields. Those who looked around and asked "then why is everyone hungry?" were dubbed loons or worse.

So no, I'm not interested in yet another Pravda piece on rising crop yields.

If investments were being made in production, wages would be rising.

I suspect you find some "believers" left around here because the tech industry is an _exception_. It's one of the few industries where substantial investments in new production (vs. rent seeking) are actually being made. Salaries in tech are therefore rising, or at least keeping up with inflation. If that's you, good for you, but you are not normal in this economy and your experience is no gauge of overall reality.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right about debt, but it's orthogonal to the essay. Re. real wages:

"The result is a steady rise in the productivity of labor, which continually increases the supply of goods produced relative to the number of workers producing them. The effect of this is a steady fall in prices relative to wages, a fall which occurs even in the midst of an increasing quantity of money and volume of spending great enough to raise prices; in this case, the rise in money wage rates outstrips the rise in prices, with the result that prices still fall relative to wages. In other words, the effect is a continuing rise in real wages and the average standard of living."

I encourage you to read the whole thing, and consider that paragraph in particular when evaluating wages vs. cost of goods, especially goods that one could simply _not_ _obtain_ in the past.

<comment><USER2> > The result is a steady rise in the productivity of labor, which continually > increases the supply of goods produced relative to the number of workers > producing them. The effect of this is a steady fall in prices relative to > wages

Huh? Where is this fall in prices?

Okay... I see it. It's in gadgets and manufactured goods. These are all things people get paid wages to produce. Meanwhile food, fuel, real estate, health care, and college tuition are exploding.

You know... the things people _need._

If you were going to extract rents, that's where you'd go... the things people need... the things with inelastic demand.

Pay people less. Extract more rent.

But Pravda says crop yields are increasing, so I guess I'm crazy.

\-- Edit: here's my reply as HN won't let me post it:

I was once a Randian myself. I feel like I know what I'm going to read.

I began to question the faith when we allowed the top tier of society to become astronomically wealthy and the promised age of wise captains of industry and private sector innovation didn't materialize.

Instead we got the economic la-la-land we have now where rent and property values are mysteriously holding at unaffordable levels as wages are falling and everyone is in debt.

Granted, we have a few lights in the wilderness. Elon Musk is probably the closest thing to a Rand hero I can think of... but wait... none of his enterprises would exist without government assistance. SpaceX is being built in close cooperation with NASA and with NASA and DoD funding. Tesla would have gone under were it not for a very risky DoE loan.

He's an exception that proves the rule, I'm afraid. He also does not espouse Randian ideology. Honestly most of the greatest captains of industry and genius investors I know of do not espouse Randian ideology.

I have my own peculiar views on the subject:

I think capitalism and socialism fail for the same reason. I call it the "big dumb money problem." It occurs when the concentration of capital exceeds the intelligence of its owner/administrator(s).

It's pretty easy to see how this happens in pure socialist systems. The initial round of investments made by a socialist bureaucracy are often pretty good: roads, schools, hospitals, universities, power plants, etc. But then the problems start. Those were all the easy, obvious investments. As they pay off, the wealth they create coupled with the increasing difficulty of the next steps forward creates a resource allocation problem that rapidly outpaces the collective IQ of the bureaucracy administrating everything. It makes a series of increasingly bad investments. Eventually the whole system collapses in a blow-off of cynicism, ending with something akin to the Russian or Chinese mafia states. (I have a brother in law in China. It is most definitely a mafia state.)

Capitalism in its pure sense follows the same course when too much wealth accumulates at the top. Individual capitalists rapidly find themselves in possession of pools of money too large for them to possibly invest productively. They solve this by delegating the problem to a financial industry not terribly unlike the Soviet bureaucracies of socialist states. This industry proceeds to make a series of bad investments (since it cannot possibly comprehend the problem domains it's investing in) and quickly becomes gun-shy, instead retreating from innovative investments and into the realm of rent extraction. Rent extraction works _too well_ , causing yet more and more capital to be concentrated into fewer and thus by definition _dumber_ (relative to the problem) hands. In the end it blows off a bit differently... instead of a post-socialist mafia state you get a post-capitalist feudal state a bit like the universe of The Hunger Games. Everyone has to go into massive debt and pay rent forever, and class mobility and monetary velocity collapses. Innovation stagnates.

The optimum is probably a hybrid, a system that permits private accumulation of capital up to the limits of the cognitive horizon of those who hold it and redistributes the rest to achieve maximum monetary velocity. The ideal -- probably not achievable since P!=NP -- would be something in which each individual always held an amount of money equal to their knowledge re: how to properly spend or invest that money.

Since again P != NP and the answers are probably not computable, we will _never_ have the optimum. Barring theoretical breakthroughs that redefine the problem, we will have to settle for bad as opposed to more bad. So I think a system with mild progressive taxation spent in ways that improve the lot of the majority is probably best.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, you're not crazy, you just haven't read the essay that is the subject of this thread ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Over the course of several generations, the US government has taxed away > trillions upon trillions of dollars that otherwise would have been saved and > invested and thereby added to the capital of the American economy.

Yeah, maaan. I mean, aside from giving us clean water regulations, clean air regulations, safe air travel, excellent roads, safe streets, access to thoroughly tested medicine, plenty of food, safety from invading armies, construction of dams and other large-scale engineering projects, world-class education, GPS, the internet, and putting a man on the moon, what has the government even _done_ with all that money?

</comment><comment><USER4> _This blog is a commentary on contemporary business, politics, economics, society, and culture, based on the values of Reason, Rational Self-Interest, and Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Its intellectual foundations are Ayn Rand 's philosophy of Objectivism..._

There are seriously that many Objectivists here?

<comment><AUTHOR> /me raises hand

Of course, we all code in Objectivist C ( [http://fdiv.net/2012/04/01/objectivist-c](http://fdiv.net/2012/04/01/objectivist-c) ) ;)

But seriously ... I'm actually surprised that there aren't _more_ Objectivists on HN. There's a strong anti-authoritarian streak here, with an emphasis on rationality, independence and capitalism. Take a look at the list of objectivist virtues ( [http://wiki.objectivismonline.net/Virtues](http://wiki.objectivismonline.net/Virtues) ):

      Rationality, Honesty, Integrity, Productivity, Independence, Pride, and Justice

That list describes a lot of people on HN.

<comment><USER4> Huh, I've got enough points, maybe I should do a poll of Objectivist, Libertarian, Anarcho-capitalist, anarchist, Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Communist, Green, etc. self-identification. Anyone I'm leaving out?

<comment><AUTHOR> I like it :)

That said I'm not convinced that all of the options there are actually in the same category; some are philosophies, others are political choices based on philosophy. E.g. I know of Objectivists who vote Republican, and Anarchists who vote Green.

Perhaps two polls: one for philosophy, one for voting choice?

 _Edited:_ I guess you could have one poll, & people could vote in two categories? I've never set up a poll myself so I'm not sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


First Bitcoin, Then Libra: Why Nation States Are Scared Stiff - <AUTHOR> https://guerrilla-capitalism.com/articles/first-bitcoin-then-libra-the-1-2-punch-against-fiat-economic-hegemony/ <comment><USER2> The degree to which this tries to push a narrative rather than just presenting facts and reasoning makes me question its credibility, but I'm trying to be open to it. I just get the vibe that the author sees himself as living in a novel in which they're the hero. A natural way for intelligent and creative people to contextualize their lives, but also a colossal source of cognitive bias.</comment>


Donald Knuth's 21st Annual Christmas Lecture: Universal Commafree Codes [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48iJx8FVuis <comment><USER2> If commafree doesn't ring a bell maybe _self-synchronizing_ does.

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

<comment><USER3> Indeed. This is useful for picking up a transmission in mid-stream at an arbitrary boundary. Or discovering the start of a sector on a disk, as it spins past the read head, spewing whatever bits it finds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know why Knuth is writing some form of C? AFAIK none of the other TAOCP contain C, or anything other than (M)MIX and pseudocode. Why change now?

<comment><USER5> I haven't watched through the whole thing, but the C code I saw from skipping through looks like it's actually the output from CWEB [1], one of Knuth's literate programming tools. It combines C source code with long-form documentation, and it can either be preprocessed to TeX (to give that nice, pretty printed document that Knuth shows in the video) or to standard C source code to compile and run.

CWEB is one of Knuth's languages of choice, and he's got tons of code written in it on his website [2], including versions of some of the stuff he's demoing on-screen.

[1] [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/cweb.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/cweb.html)

[2] [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html](http://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was present and unfortunately didn't understand the lecture till I looked up [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding) halfway through. It was very interesting after that point though!

</comment><comment><USER7> For once a news headline with "Donald" not matching Trump.

</comment><comment><USER8> Usually I don't have any objection against the word Christmas. But in this case I think it is abusive: this talk is not about Christmas and it is not on Christmas day or even close. It seems just a random way of adding the word Christmas to a seminar, maybe only because the speaker happens to be Christian... I would like to believe that Stanford is above this kind of behavior, but sadly it is not.

<comment><USER9> Please let's keep religious flamewars off of HN. Bikeshedding, too, while we're at it.

<comment><USER10> The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a series of lectures on a single topic, held since 1825, presented scientific subjects to a general audience, in an informative and entertaining manner. Michael Faraday initiated the first Christmas Lecture series in 1825.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Saw Donald. Thought, Not again!! Trump at hacker news too!!</comment>


Open Ph.D.: An Experiment in Higher Learning - <AUTHOR> http://openphd.wordpress.com/ <comment><USER2> Course work is the least important part of a Ph.D. Most of the work and learning is in the research.

<comment><USER3> Meh, most of the research will fail. The true learning happens in the surroundings. Most of what you learn will come from the stories and shared experiences of your peers, post-docs, and professors. This is why academies have existed for so long through history.

This is also why I love this approach! The Ph.D. will only be successful if it's possible to replace the surroundings and people of academy with the internet. If she's successful, the success will be self evident. Unfortunately, I still have my doubts about the chances of success.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail". In my experience most (proper scientific) research succeeds eventually, both in the sense that it (a) gives the authors something to write a paper about and (b) it adds something, however small, to the total accumulated store of human knowledge.

I will say, though, that while reading a paper, or a book, or even going to a lecture, can be useful from time to time, just about everything I learned in my PhD and postdoc was learned from face-to-face conversation with people who knew more than I did. The internet can't replace that.

<comment><USER3> _I'm not sure what you mean by "most of the research will fail"._

I've been working toward my Ph.D. for 7 years now. In that time, I've been involved in no fewer than 15 different research projects. Many of those made it a month or two before the results indicated that there was nothing interesting to be learned, and we moved on to the next problem. (The value of negative results is a topic for a different debate.)

What I meant by my statement is that, if you took the research that a graduate student does in a lab at a university, and then had them do the same research in a lab in their basement (or some other isolated environment without peers and mentors), they wouldn't learn nearly as much as they do in the university setting. The specific research being done isn't as important as the setting in which it is done.

<comment><USER5> Questionable -- they would certainly learn _different things_ if they did it in their basement. For example, so much in university is already set up for you -- constructing your own lab in your basement, calibrating machines, writing custom software to run experiments, etc. would be quite a learning experience. (I'm talking about experimental fields here.)

But more importantly, in universities you are guided away from things that do not work usually without entirely understanding why. Through independent study, you would go down these incorrect paths and have a much richer understanding. Instead of doing things how everyone else does them, you'd gain new perspectives than the status quo, and this would give you a leg up.

Of course, this all presumes that the student is extremely self motivated. Unfortunately, even at the graduate level these students are very rare. This is why some professors are very hands on and others are very hands off -- different students work best at different levels of independence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A very cool experiment, and I hope it goes well. But don't you _get_ funded to do a Ph.D? Isn't this more expensive (i.e. no stipend) than actually going to a school?

I suppose it may be hard to interest a university in some research on open education...

<comment><USER3> _Some_ Ph.D.'s get funded, but even then the amount is laughable (try living off $20,000/yr in NYC).

<comment><USER7> $20,000/yr is less than I get from the CSE program at Michigan. Surely you're exaggerating?

<comment><USER8> My stipend is only $17000. That's up from when I started four years ago at $13500. That covers rent and food, but obviously not books. Of course, Baltimore is far cheaper than New York, but it's still possible to live on.

<comment><USER9> What are you doing?

<comment><USER8> Political science (major: international relations, minor: comparative politics). I've talked to some of the students in hard sciences (e.g. bio) and they report stipends of $23000. It's probably just set department-by- department, and mine either happens to be poor or stingy.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tydlig - A new kind of iPad calculator - <AUTHOR> http://tydligapp.com/ <comment><USER2> That looks like a cool app, but it is not a new kind of calculator: see also Calca and Soulver for previous work in this space.

I think adding a grapher is a real advance, however.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always liked the idea of a more free form excel. Excel is great to dink around with estimations but it's way overkill for the job. Something like this looks perfect for those "back of the envelope" calculations that are more in tune with how we really think.

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks inapired by Bret Victor - [http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable](http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable)

</comment><comment><USER5> Now this is an interesting app.

Anyone knows if there is something similar available for android?</comment>


Lovelace – The Origin (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/ <comment><USER2> The printed book is truly delightful. It contains a mostly complete explanation of how the difference engine worked and how the analytical engine was supposed to work. It's also full of scholarly footnotes to primary sources of everything she put into it. And it's fun! Steampunk fantasy of what could have been. I hope it gets adapted to a movie or TV series some day.

<comment><USER3> I have the book too and it's great, but it's not complete - I'm pretty sure it lacks the bits with Babbage fighting street musicians.

<comment><USER4> That sounds vaguely familiar, so I think that it does have it. If not, it has to be at least mentioned in the footnotes. In fact, I think it might be one of the first pages of the alternate-universe section?

The footnotes in Ms. Padua's book are _AMAZING_. More entertaining than the book itself at times. I have never enjoyed reading footnotes so much. That sounds like faint praise, but I mean it as real praise. ;) She has multi-page footnotes, breaks the fourth wall in HILARIOUS ways, and introduces you to characters like I. K. Brunel.

This is a book that I treasure, and I wish I could explain why I love it. It is a comic book about Nerd Things, with footnotes, and footnotes for footnotes, and so on. It's a labor of love, masterfully executed, and I feel like I want to read parts of it again for the fun of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The comics explaining the background of this comics and the book:

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/11/ada- lovelace-d...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/11/ada-lovelace-day- sydney-padua-babbage)

I like them so much.

(And I really don't like the Nicholas Lezard's comment on the Guardian site).

</comment><comment><USER6> Her book (graphic novel) is worth it for the footnotes alone (some of which take up more than half a page), even if you _don 't_ like steampunk fantasy with Lovelace, Babbage, Boole, Brunel, and more... And who wouldn't?

<comment><USER2> I love the depiction of Brunel as some kind of 19th century steampunk Wolverine. And those badass boasts! Some of them based on real historical boasts! "I smell... steam!" "Looks like you need an engineer." "With all the steam I can command, your ladyship." I hope the mythology around these characters keeps on growing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Link to the completed book:

[https://smile.amazon.com/Thrilling-Adventures-Lovelace- Babba...](https://smile.amazon.com/Thrilling-Adventures-Lovelace-Babbage- Computer/dp/0307908275)

<comment><USER8> I have the book, was a present last xmas - it's a great read! Not all of it is in Comic book form - there's a lot of well written content as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I desperately wanted to love this book as it has all the right elements: Lovelace, graphic novel, Babbage, the difference engine, steam punk... However, I felt the number of footnotes were excessive. The footnote material was excellent, but it felt like when movies resort to using a voice over to explain the plot.

I bought and read the book hoping it would be suitable for my kids (10 & 13), but having half its content in footnotes killed it as a kid friendly book.

If you are looking for a good book for kids with smart female leads (a fictionalized Ada Lovelace and Marry Shelley) I highly recommend The Case of the Missing Moonstone (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency #1) by Jordan Stratford. Probably best for ages 6-10.

<comment><USER5> > hoping it would be suitable for my kids (10 & 13), but having half its > content in footnotes killed it as a kid friendly book.

I remember being exactly that old as your kids, absolutely _hating_ the books that were specially made to be "kids friendly."

Because I was aware that the books existed that weren't dumbed-down. That the grown ups were reading. And of course I wanted as soon as possible to be one of those. And I liked to see and learn the details when the topic interested me. That included pictures, diagrams and footnotes.

So from the point of view of me, age 10-13: I hate your approach to your kids (that were the words of me then, maybe I'd more polite now).

I can imagine that your kids actually _need_ some "kids friendly" books as seen as such by the parents, but you should honestly ask yourself if there's your responsibility for that too. I know my nieces also prefer the material for grownups, if it interests them.

I know what I didn't like at that time: the long fiction books about some people who lived hundred years ago, at the times when everything was different. I didn't care to read about what some lieutenant of some non existing army said to some young aristocrat woman in some country I never saw, at the ball that actually never happened, but that the author invented to pass the point and obscure the relation to the now long-dead people he knew, and how the author thought the woman thought about it etc. But reading details about something, if I was interested at the topic, more of that please.

So if something is not kids friendly, it's more that the kids don't care too much about history, and they even more can detect if something is "modern" or not. You know, the parents are already the generation that "doesn't get it."

My position: if the kids don't like something, fine. But don't decide for them.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Edge with Chromium Suddenly Stops Working with Google Meet - <AUTHOR> https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-edge-chromium-suddenly-stops-working-google-meet <comment><USER2> A marginal Google product isn't running on a dev build of a not yet released browser, the horror!</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a masterbation-free site where I can have random conversations? - <AUTHOR> Is there an online community where I can have a random video conversation to meet some great people/hone my social skills?
I'm looking for a reputable one (no masterbaters!) where I can match with likeminded people and simply have a short video conversation.
Being a remote software developer means I spend large amounts of time isolated in my own head, and I'd love to break up my day with 15 minute conversations with random, awesome individuals.
If this doesn't exist, please let me know if you'd also find value in something like this.
I'm currently between projects and I might build it myself :) <comment><USER2> > _I might build it myself_

Build it if you think it'd be fun or something worthwhile for your CV. Don't build it because you want it to be a useful, nudity-free chat service. People have tried that (including Chat Roulette itself).

It's hard to get people to use things with their real identities. Unfortunately, anonymity also enables trolling. I think it's impossible to have a random chat site without masturbation. It is, bizarrely, part of human nature to troll.

Honing your social skills can be hard, but you might want to try clubs or meetups in your city. Video chat isn't much like real-life socializing anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's possible to more or less exclude nudity.

If you kick out anonymity and build out profiles around user's social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc), which something like this would do, there are some good ways to 1) be pretty sure of identity and 2) make sure people can't create duplicate accounts.

With those parameters I think out of the gate people are less likely to whip out their junk, and, if they still do it multiple times, they can effectively be banned.

<comment><USER3> You mean I can't create another account on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn? Weird. I was under the impression that it was easy.

Social network linking != nudity filter.

<comment><USER4> You can require a minimum number of connections; this isn't perfect since there are ways to fake this out as well, but I don't think it can be done for without investing time or money. (Also, it means that if you don't have many friends/etc. that you cannot use the service.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe just create a new bracelet that means "open to random conversations" and hang out at coffee shops. Yeah, that seems like the easiest solution.

</comment><comment><USER6> For years people have been using speaking to themselves in a mirror as a method for improving social skills. The digital version of this is probably streaming. Maybe you could try something like stre.am or periscope for practicing speaking to others and of course you would greatly reduce the number of "jerks" you encounter as long as you're the only one in the conversation streaming video. (disclosure: I work for the company that makes stre.am)

</comment><comment><USER7> You could try buliding an email list with people interested in this kind of chatting and could use skype or whatever software you prefer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always thought this was a really cool idea, but every time I've tried I've encountered a really disgusting side of the web I pretend doesn't exist.

The real question is, how do you prevent flash-masturbators/nudists etc from infecting your random video chat community?

Sure you could have a flag feature that auto-bans or temp-bans until moderation. Maybe some sort of video algorithm that detects a certain percentage of "skin" on the screen?

I think one of the most obvious suggestions is to require an account for reach user, confirm email etc. That at least will weed out a lot of it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hm, maybe if you build one yourself, require something like a github account for chatting but don't reveal the identity to the parties. That way you can ban people that get reported for inappropriate behavior and random weirdos are unlikely to have a github account.

Setting something up that uses webrtc is not all that hard... :)

<comment><AUTHOR> GitHub is too niche.

I would want to meet people from all walks of life, not just fellow software developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Make online friends. See if they will talk with you via an existing service, such as Skype.

I have had lots of online friends over the years and talked by phone, met in person, done video chats and other kinds of chat. "No masturbation" is more about the social connections you make, not the platform you use per se.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like there should be something like this for language exchange. Or tabletop gaming.

</comment><comment><USER12> How about building it, then inviting only people who you trust not to put nudity or bad things in general, and thenm if it takes off, making the website accepting only users who have been invited by current members?

</comment><comment><USER13> I tought and searched for this 3 Days ago. Found nothing. I'm interested!

</comment><comment><USER14> Why not talk to people on IRC? irc.ponychat.net #geek is my usual haunt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Typing on IRC is still pretty "in-your-head".

The idea is to replicate online, as much as possible, the experience of having a face-to-face conversation.

<comment><USER15> I like face-to-face conversations but I'm not a fan of video conversations. In fact, I prefer audio-only if I have to conference in. Maybe if you made it audio only that might make for better conversations and a reduction in "masterbaters".

<comment><USER16> I second an audio only approach. To me this would filter out a lot of the potentially scandalous video conversations you might have.

Audio also forces both users to focus just on the conversation and takes away the worries of how you look, lighting, etc.

With audio, you remove some of the friction of having a webcam, laptop, etc for video unlike for audio you could potentially integrate it to a cell service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's value in this -- ping me if you want to discuss more.

<comment><USER18> I like the idea and would like to join the discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 1) Build site 2) Put up the 'masterbation section' 3) Create reputations 4) Don't go to the masterbation section 5) Talk to reputable people.

I mean, how do you choose who to talk to IRL? I don't make you login to FB in order to chat with me.

</comment><comment><USER20> www.dictionary.com for spelling English words

</comment><comment><USER21> LOL NO WELCOME TO THE INTERNET.</comment>


Ask HN: Creating a Mastodon Instance for My University Society - <AUTHOR> Good Day,
I recently started a society in my university dedicated to cyber security and hopefully grow into a hacker space.
I want to kick off the fall term by hosting a decentralized social network like mastodon. I am currently learning Vue and looking for an internship this summer.
Any advice on how to approach it, what should i learn and should i even focus on this. I personally dislike twitter and i think the more decentralized social networks such as mastodon should be encouraged at colleges and universities.
Location: Canada <comment><USER2> Do you have any programming experience at all?

"Learning Vue" won't cut it. Do you have any backend, database, frontend, etc... any experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I am in my second year, i have experience in flask, express, and MySQL. I am currently learning vue for a personal project of mine but yeah, i do have experience in those frameworks</comment></comment>